Chris Herring
Biography
Chris’ research focuses on poverty, homelessness, and housing in US cities. His work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Problems, City and Community, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, City, Teaching Sociology and book chapters in edited volumes of Anthropology, Urban Studies, Social Movements, Geography, and Community-Based Research.
Chris is currently working on his first book – an ethnography of the criminalization of homelessness in San Francisco to be published with UC Press. He is also working on a study with Professor Sandra Smith of Harvard on the perceptions and experiences of people with criminal records with Ban the Box employment policies.
Chris’ writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Places, Cal Matters, the San Francisco Examiner, Progressive Planning Magazine, Shelterforce, the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, and homeless street newspapers across the US and Canada. His research has been featured in the LA Times, NY Times, UK Guardian, Bloomberg’s City Lab, NPR, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, and several other news outlets.
Chris’ research, writing, and teaching embraces the ideals of public sociology. He has co-directed studies with community organizers at the National Coalition on Homelessness and San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. He has also collaborated on research with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, the Western Regional Advocacy Project, and ACORN. Chris regularly consults with county governments, legal aid groups, and serves as an expert witness on cases involving the criminalization of homelessness.
Before coming to UCLA, Chris completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiave, and earned a PhD at UC Berkeley Sociology, an MA in Social Anthropology at Central European University, Budapest and a BA in Economics from Bard College. He also worked as a Project Manager in New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
For more information and links to published writing please visit his website
Degrees
Ph.D. Sociology, University of California, Berkeley 2020
M.A. Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 2013
M.A. Social Anthropology, Central European University, 2010
Publications
Journal Articles
Chris Herring. 2021. “Complaint-Oriented ‘Services:’ Shelters as Tools for Criminalizing Homelessness.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 693(1), 264-283.
Chris Herring, Dilara Yarbrough, and Lisa Marie Alatorre. 2020. “Pervasive Penality: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty.” Social Problems, 67(1), 131-149.
Chris Herring. 2019. “Complaint-Oriented Policing: Regulating Homelessness in Public Space.” American Sociological Review, 84(5), 769-800. *American Society of Criminology Joan Petersilia Outstanding Article Award. 2021.
Chris Herring and Emily Rosenman. 2016. “Engels in the Crescent City: Revisiting the Housing Question in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 15(3), 616-638.
Chris Herring, Manuel Rosaldo, Josh Seim, and Benjamin Shestakovsky. 2016. “Living Theory: Principles and Practices for Teaching Social Theory Ethnographically.” Teaching Sociology, 12(1), 1-12. Chris Herring and Manuel Lutz. 2015. “The Roots and Implications of the United States’ Homeless Tent Cities.” City, 19 (5), 689-701.
Chris Herring. 2014.“The New Logics of Homeless Seclusion: A Comparative Study of Homeless Encampments in the Western United States.” City and Community, 13(4), 285-309.
Book Chapters
Chris Herring. In Press. “Regulating Homeless Encampments.” In D. Culhane, S. Fitzpatrick, G. Johnson, S. Metreaux, and E. O’Sullivan (eds), “Research Handbook on Homelessness.” Edward Elgar Publishing.
Chris Herring. In Press. “Housing Deprivation: Homelessness and the Reproduction of Poverty.” In B. McCabe and E. Rosen (eds), The Sociology of Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bilal Ali, Lisa Marie Alatorre, Jennifer Friedenbach, Chris Herring, TJ Johnston, and Dilara Yarbrough. 2020. “Fighting Anti-Homeless Laws through Participatory Action Research: Reflections from the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness’ Criminalization Study.” In S. Greenbaum and P. Zinn (eds), Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. *Society of Social Problems, Community Partner Paper Award. 2019.
Chris Herring. 2019. “Between Street and Shelter: Homeless Seclusion and the Neutralization of Poverty.” In J. Flint and R. Powell (eds.) Class, Ethnicity, and State in the Polarized Metropolis: Putting Wacquant to Work. London: Palgrave.
Chris Herring. 2013. “The Housing Question of Disaster Reconstruction: Rebuilding New Orleans on the Tenants of an Ownership Society.” In E. Murphy and N. Hourani (eds.), The Housing Question: Tensions, Continuities, and Contingencies in the Modern City. Ashgate Press.
Zoltan Gluck and Chris Herring. 2012. “The Homeless Question of Occupy.” In Occupy!: Scenes from Occupy America. New York: Verso Press.
Policy Reports
Sandra Smith and Chris Herring. 2022. “The Limits of Ban the Box.” Institute for Labor and Employment Research. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley.
Adriana Camarena, Stella Kunkat, Jennifer Friedenbach, John Hamanski, Chris Herring, Samantha Lew, Courtney McDonald, Sara Shortt, John Stiefell. 2021. “Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CART): A Community Plan for San Francisco.” San Francisco Coalition to End the Policing of Homelessness. San Francisco.
Chris Herring, Dilara Yarbrough, Jamie Chang, Mark Flemming, Chris Hanssmann, Pike Long, Kelsey Ludwig. 2020. “Stop the Revolving Door: A Street Level Framework for a New System.” Our City Our Home Coalition. San Francisco.
Kamran Abri Lavasani, Haruna Aridomi, Collette Auerswald, Zachary Butzin-Dozier, Brigid Cakouros, Joey Chiang, Brandon Chu, Jack Colford, Hoaian Dang, Sarah Ferrell, Jay Graham, Madeleine Kane, Toshali Katyal, Christine Ma, Dough Martin, Matt Matusieqicz, Sandra McCoy. 2020. “For the Good of Us All: Addressing the Needs of Our Unhoused Neighbors During the Covid-19 Pandemic.” UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Berkeley.
Chris Herring, Dilara Yarborough, Lisa Marie Alattore, and the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. 2015. “Punishing the Poorest: How San Francisco’s Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty.” San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. San Francisco.
Chris Herring. 2010. “Tent Cities in America: A Pacific Coast Report.” National Coalition for the Homeless. Washington DC.
Under Review / In Progress
Chris Herring. Cruel Survival: Policing and Punishing the Unhoused in the American City (Book Manuscript Under Contract with UC Press)
Chris Herring. “Precarious Housing Fixes: The Limits of Homeless Housing Programs in San Francisco.”
Jeff Garnand and Chris Herring. “Public-Private Parasites: How Business Improvement Districts Criminalize Homelessness.”
Sandra Smith and Chris Herring. “Undoing the Mark of a Criminal Record: Ban the Box and the Limits of Fair Chance Employment Policies.”
Awards & Grants
American Society of Criminology’s Joan Petersilia Outstanding Article Award. 2021.
American Sociological Association’s Community and Urban Sociology Student Paper Award, Honorable Mention. 2020.
Society of Social Problems, Community Partner Paper Award. With Dilara Yarbrough and Lisa Marie Alatorre. 2019.
UC Berkeley Sociology Alumni Prize for Public Sociology. 2016.
UC Berkeley Teaching Effectiveness Award. 2015.
UC Berkeley Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. 2014.
Collaborators
Current Collaborators
Sandra Susan Smith, Harvard University
Jeff Garnand, University of California Berkeley
Past Collaborations
Dilara Yarbrough, San Francisco State University
Tony Sparks, San Francisco State University
Jamie Chang, Santa Clara University
Mark Flemming, University of California Berkeley
Chris Hannsmann, San Francisco State University
Coco Auwerswald, University of California Berkeley
Neil Gong, University of California San Diego
Manuel Lutz, Fachhochschule Potsdam University of Applied Sciences
Emily Rosenman, Penssylvania State University
Josh Seim, Boston College
Ben Shestakovsky, University of Pennsylvania
Manuel Rosaldo, Pennsylvania State University
Zoltan Gluck, American University
Mannissa Marhawal, American University
Erin McElroy, University of Texas Austin
Lisa Bates, Portland State University
Gretchen Purser, Syracuse University
Daniella Aiello, University of Georgia
Movement Based Collaborators
San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness
Western Regional Advocacy Project
National Coalition on Homelessness
ACORN New Orleans
