Session: WITHDRAWN: Using the Administrative Past to Change the Future: A Transdisciplinary Collaboration Proposing Policy Solutions to Housing Needs in the Aftermath of Covid-19 (Society for Social Work and Research 26th Annual Conference - Social Work Science for Racial, Social, and Political Justice)

Symposium Abstract: The use of longitudinal administrative datasets has increased in recent years, in conjunction with the rise of machine learning methods and cloud computing, which have supported their storage and analysis. In particular, the use of machine learning for analysis has been shown to offer exciting possibilities for the kinds of conclusions we can draw from such data, but researchers often fail to understand the context of administrative data production. This omission has led to erroneous conclusions, and more significantly, has been shown to exacerbate social inequities within and without human service systems. In response, public interest scholarship is moving beyond interdisciplinary teams to transcidiplinarity: collective attempts to take the best ideas from a variety of fields to move closer toward social justice as a product of scholarly endeavors.

This symposium showcases the first outputs from just such a collaboration. The four papers offered bring together scholars with expertise in computational social science, computer science, social work science, and housing policy practice; they seek to propose actionable policy interventions to the impending tsunami of evictions in the aftermath of covid 19. The papers focus on areas within NY state, in hopes of providing cont3exutally relevant solutions which, if successful, may be brought to scale. The symposium aims include:

1. To illustrate the potential evictions crisis in terms of its impact on marginalized communities;

2. To show the audience the symbiotic relationship between established quantitative methods and machine learning analyses;

3.Underscore the importance of moving beyond disciplinary expectations to create learning research teams that move deliberately to impact policy.

Investing time and effort to build collaborations that move beyond disciplines offers the promise to center the outcomes of marginalized populations in social interventions. This symposium offers the first products of a collaboration which seeks such ends in housing policy.