Dennis Culhane is a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania where he studies homelessness and housing policy.

Xavier de Souza Briggs is an associate professor of sociology and urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is editor of The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America.

Ronald Inglehart is a political science professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a research professor at its Center for Political Studies. He is particularly interested in the effects of changing belief systems on societies socially and politically. His books include (as co-author) Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, which concluded that industrial […]

William C. Apgar is a senior scholar at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a former assistant secretary of housing at HUD. Affordable housing is one of his main areas of interest. He is a founding member of […]

Dean Hamer is a geneticist and director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. He is the author of The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes. His hypothesis, criticized by some other scientists, is that some people inherit a gene that predisposes them toward faith in […]

Ryan T. Cragun is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, where he studies secularization, the nonreligious and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

HUD has an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The website links to HUD faith-based liaisons in each state and links to information about homes and communities by state.

Shaun Donovan is secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD, the nation’s housing agency, is charged with increasing homeownership, particularly among minorities, and creating affordable housing.

The Local Initiatives Support Corp. helps resident-led, community-based development organizations turn distressed neighborhoods into healthy ones and works to increase the amount of affordable housing. Its home page links to 30 offices across the country.