Chapin Hall

Madeline Youngren is a Policy Analyst at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on using evidence-based research to drive policy solutions that positively impact youth experiencing housing instability and homelessness. Youngren is passionate about action-oriented and systems approach research aimed at producing substantive change in health, child welfare, and other systems to provide access to safe, stable, and quality affordable housing for people with low incomes.

As a Policy Analyst at Chapin Hall, Youngren collaborates on several projects, including an evaluation of Nebraska’s Family First Prevention Services Act Prevention Plan, which is designed to address social determinants of health and mitigate traumatic stress through family engagement and service connection. She also works on a team exploring how administrative data can be used to better understand youth homelessness, in addition to a project examining data from the National Runaway Safeline, among other projects in the youth homelessness portfolio.

Prior to joining Chapin Hall, Youngren helped manage a Congressionally mandated eviction study at the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). In this role, she analyzed large-scale administrative court data paired with qualitative context gathered from local experts, external stakeholders, and grantees to understand the current landscape of eviction. Prior to working at LSC, Youngren gained her Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning with a concentration in Housing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. While a Master’s student, Youngren was a Graduate Research Assistant working on historic preservation and legacy business projects and held internships at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as a Housing Policy Intern, Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority as a Housing Policy Intern, and Capital Impact Partners, a Community Development Financial Institution, as a Policy and Impact Intern.