Sam Lutzker
Biography
Sam Lutzker is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. He is a community-engaged, mixed methods researcher of urban poverty and its governance, with a focus on homelessness and housing. His dissertation, “Vehicle Living in Los Angeles: An Ethnography of Homelessness, Home, and the Local Politics of Criminalization and Care,” follows a diverse range of vehicle residents as they navigate shelter and housing, policing and social services, and shifting neighborhoods where their presence is both demonized and tolerated.
Sam is a collaborative researcher who engages community partners in projects that seek to have a public impact. As part of the After Echo Park Lake Research Collective (based at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality & Democracy), he co-authored a widely cited policy report on the mass displacement of unhoused people from Echo Park Lake, as well as an article in Radical Housing Journal and an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. More recently, Sam co-authored a policy report based on a survey of homelessness in recreational vehicles for the City of San José, CA with Graham Pruss and the Lived Experience Advisory Board of Silicon Valley. He was a founding member of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid and has written about state- and city-level homeless policies in the Los Angeles Times and Knock LA.
At UCLA, Sam co-founded and coordinates the Urban Sociology Working Group. He enjoys mentoring undergraduates who are engaged in research on a variety of topics.
Prior to graduate school, Sam was a project coordinator at Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE), where he coordinated “Facing Whiteness” and other projects. As a Princeton in Asia fellow, he worked as a university English teacher in Wuhan, China, and he later became a non-profit consultant in Beijing. He received his B.A. in Sociology and East Asian Studies from Columbia University.
When not engaged in research or teaching, Sam loves outdoor exercise and eating his way through LA with friends.
Fields of Study
Urban Sociology, Housing and Homelessness, Race and Ethnicity, Ethnographic and Mixed Methods, Community-Engaged Research, Public Policy.
Publications
Peer-review Scholarship:
Roy, Ananya, Annie Powers, Ashley Bennet, Sam Lutzker and Hilary Malson (on behalf of After Echo Park Lake Research Collective). 2022. “Continuum of Carcerality: How Liberal Urbanism Governs Homelessness.” Radical Housing Journal. (https://radicalhousingjournal.org/2022/continuum-of-carcerality/)
Reports:
Pruss, Graham and Sam Lutzker (in collaboration with Lived Experience Advisory Board of Silicon Valley). 2023 San José Recreational Vehicle Resident Survey Final Report. 2023. Submitted to the City of San José, CA.
After Echo Park Lake Research Collective. 2022. Dis(Placement): The Fight for Housing and Community after Echo Park Lake. UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy report. (https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/2022/03/23/displacement/)
This report has been covered by international media, including The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/23/los-angeles-echo-park-un…
Public Scholarship:
Roy, Ananya and Sam Lutzker. 2022. “How the brutal clearing of an L.A. homeless encampment can teach S.F. what not to do in the Tenderloin.” San Francisco Chronicle. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-the-brutal-cle…)
Lutzker, Sam. 2021. “Op-Ed: Cancel parking fines for unhoused people who live in their cars.” Los Angeles
Times. (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-05-19/homeless-cars-parking-t…)
Lutzker, Sam. 2021. “Is Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas ‘Champion of the Homeless Population?’
Depends who you ask.” Knock L.A. (https://knock-la.com/mark-ridley-thomas-anti-homeless-campinglaws/)
Lutzker, Sam. 2021. “‘Project No Key’: How Punitive Policies Hamper California’s Efforts to House the
Un-Housed.” Knock LA. (https://knock-la.com/project-roomkey-punitive-policies-ce8d59c534fb/).
Book Chapters:
Kitonga, Ndindi and Sam Lutzker (on behalf of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid). Forthcoming (2024). “What to make of ‘mutual aid?’ Lessons from organizing across unhoused camps.” Dispatches from the Threshold: Organizing for Housing Justice in a Pandemic.
Awards & Grants
- Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2023-2024
- Mellon Foundation Scholar-in-Community Seed Grant, 2023
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) Honorable Mention, 2021
- UCLA Excellence in Teaching Award, 2021-2022
- UCLA Graudate Summer Research Mentorship (GSRM) 2021
- UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship (GRM) 2020-2021
- UCLA Graudate Summer Research Mentorship (GSRM) 2020
- UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Graduate Student Working Group Funding
- Housing Justice Public Scholarship Series, 2021-2022
- Informal Tenancy Working Group, 2021-2022
- Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, 2020-2021
