Students Urged to Think Like Policymakers to Address Homelessness and Housing

At a time when the United States is experiencing a nationwide housing crisis, a course at Yale Law School is pushing students to formulate real-world solutions to one of today’s most complex and pressing issues.

“Homelessness and Housing: Law & Policy,” taught by Luke Bronin ’06 this spring, studies the nature and causes of homelessness and housing insecurity in America today. The course examines the evolving legal landscape concerning encampments and the use of public space, housing barriers for those with past criminal convictions, protections for children experiencing homelessness, evictions and tenant protections, the debate over various forms of rent control, the tenant union movement, and the drivers of housing costs and scarcity at the state and local level.

“This course surveys a number of the legal issues and policy debates that anyone who wants to do work in housing or homelessness prevention needs to be familiar with,” said Bronin. “We hit a lot of the most prominent and complex issues.”

The course unpacks the nuances inherent in those issues and how policies can differ when tackling universal problems. For example, Bronin noted that while cities and states across the country have seen an increase in homelessness, housing insecurity, and housing costs in recent years, there is great variation when it comes to visibility, responsiveness, and prevention in each location.

“The upside of that variation is that it gives us lots of alternative examples to look at,” said Bronin.

Bronin is a Visiting Lecturer in Law and Tsai Leadership Senior Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Law School, as well as the former mayor of Hartford, Connecticut — a position he served in from 2016 to 2024. Though it’s his first time teaching this course, he said his experience leading the state’s capital city directly informs his approach to the class material.

“Hartford is a city with intense concentrated poverty, where so many families experience housing insecurity or, at minimum, enormous pressure from housing costs — and a city that provides social services not just for its own residents, but for an entire region,” said Bronin. “Most of the issues we address in this course are issues that my team and I confronted directly.”

Kaley Pillinger ’27 said that the class encourages students to grapple with some of the largest policy challenges facing the U.S. today.

“It has been so powerful to learn about Professor Bronin’s direct experience running the city of Hartford, and to hear from guest speakers who bring their own strategies and approaches to our housing crisis,” she said.

Bronin aims to provide his students with the framework needed to be able to understand and dissect the deep complexities related to homelessness and housing while also emboldening them to make the difficult decisions that come with being in a position of power.

“In my experience, law students and even many experienced lawyers are very comfortable analyzing issues and articulating multiple sides of an argument, but sometimes less comfortable when asked: ‘ok, so you’re the decision-maker — what are you going to do?’” said Bronin. “I hope my students come away with a greater awareness of the tradeoffs and potential unintended consequences associated with any particular policy, but also a greater sense of what it means to think and act as a decision-maker.”

These tradeoffs were challenges Bronin grappled with constantly in his political role, which he said was a humbling experience and “perhaps the most important thing” he took from his experience as mayor.

“I felt a profound obligation to try to support our most vulnerable residents and make sure that our city government treated everybody with dignity and respect,” Bronin said. “At the same time, I felt a very real responsibility to protect public space and create a sense of order and economic vibrancy for a city that was struggling to grow. We tried to strike the right balance, coupling increased outreach and support with a pretty hard line against encampments. But it’s a hard balance to strike. And there are plenty of other issues where the tradeoffs are very real and very challenging. We talk a lot about those challenges in class.”

Students in the class said Bronin’s unique background impacts how they understand the course material.

“I love that Professor Bronin teaches from experience as both an attorney and a former capital city mayor,” said Kate Ahrens ’27. “He consistently encourages us to think about how case law, legislation, and economic realities intersect to create complex housing challenges.”

Students’ personal and professional experience has also been valuable in shaping class discussions.

“There’s a number of students who have firsthand experience with the issues we’re examining, either through their own personal lives, through housing clinic work, or through prior work in housing development or housing finance, and I’m really grateful to have those perspectives in our class discussions,” Bronin said.