VCU news

By Geoff LoCicero
VCU School of Social Work

With a strong background in research and real-world challenges, Virginia Commonwealth University’s M. Alex Wagaman has been tasked with a key role – and a tight timeline – in a federal project targeting youth homelessness.

Wagaman, Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Social Work, began a one-year contract in May as a special advisor with the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. To complement the council’s federal strategic plan, All In, which launched in December 2022, Wagaman will be leading the creation of a population-specific plan for youth homelessness.

A key component is the involvement of youth who have the lived and learned experience of homelessness. In the short term, they will serve in an advisory role. In the long term, they will have opportunities to develop skills to become future federal policymakers.

“We would love to see pipelines for young adults with lived experience to eventually be in staff positions to run what we build out,” Wagaman said. “That’s ultimately the goal: They should be the ones leading the work.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s point-in-time count in January 2023 documented more than 34,700 youth and young adults who experienced homelessness in a single night, though HUD estimates that is an undercount. The National Center for Homeless Education reported that 1.2 million students experienced homelessness in the 2021-22 school year, with disproportionate impacts on youths of color, who identify as LGBTQIA+, who have disabilities, who are pregnant or parenting, and who are English learners or have aged out of the foster care system.

Wagaman has been recruiting youth from around the nation for the advisory team and taking inventory of current support and programming at the federal level and from nongovernmental partners. This work is leading up to a national meeting in September in Washington, where key players will develop the plan, facilitated by the youth team.

Erika Jones-Haskins, USICH’s director of policy initiatives, said her agency then expects to formally adopt the Wagaman-led plan as a blueprint for the federal effort. Then comes implementation, with a due date in spring 2025.

“Alex is the right person at this time for this work – Alex is so known and respected in the community,” said Jones-Haskins, who was previously based in Richmond and is familiar with Wagaman’s longstanding work to prevent youth homelessness. “It is on a tight timeline, and we’re really trying to put some fire under this effort in a very short amount of time.”

Wagaman feels well-positioned to execute the vision for the federal project, with her experience as an academic and researcher who also maintains strong connections to the practice and policy community. She is a co-founder of Advocates for Richmond Youth and has co-led funded initiatives such as the Richmond team in the national Grand Challenge to tackle homelessness among LGBTQIA+ youth and youth of color, and the youth shared-housing project Marsha and Marian’s Neighbors with grants from the Virginia Housing Trust Fund.

“I’m trying to move as rapidly as possible,” she said. “There are good things about having me stay in this role at VCU and then also do this work for the agency. I can help learn the federal context, figure out what the long term might look like and use the mechanisms I have available to move quickly on other things.”

Wagaman will also help with the federal project’s research agenda, which builds off a USICH gathering in January that was held in conjunction with the annual Society for Social Work and Research conference. She said her role and charge have added energy – and urgency – to the fight against youth homelessness.

“I feel really, really honored and excited – and a little overwhelmed. It’s a lot. it’s a big lift,” said Wagaman, who noted that she is supporting government workers who have spent decades on the cause. “I’m an organizer at heart, and my practice experience is as an organizer. What I’m good at is bringing people to the table and really making space for people’s voices to be heard and to do collective work together. I’m excited about being able to do that.”

And she will be busy, with her roles at VCU, in the community and now with the federal government keeping her on the move with deadlines approaching.

“I’m in this really nice position where I have one foot still in academia and in practice. I’m still running a housing program. I’m working with direct service staff. I’m working with young people locally. I’m still doing research. My other foot is in the federal government world,” Wagaman said. “I was thinking I probably need more than two feet, to extend the metaphor.”