We are pleased to invite you to a Lunch seminar on "PLearning Optimal and Fair Policies for Allocating Scarce Housing Resources to People Experiencing Homelessness" .

Abstract

We study the problem of allocating scarce housing resources of different types to individuals experiencing homelessness based on their observed covariates. We propose a framework for evaluating fairness in such resource allocation systems and present a set of incompatibility results that raise hard moral trade-offs and can help guide the discussion among stakeholders in deciding which fairness metrics to impose when allocating scarce resources. We leverage administrative observational data from the Los Angeles Homeless Management Information System to learn a provably asymptotically optimal online housing allocation policy that best aligns with stakeholder preferences and fairness constraints while satisfying resource limitations. Our policies improve fairness, efficiency, and transparency of the current system all at once. This is work in partnership with LAHSA, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Phebe Vayanos is an Associate Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Southern California where she holds a Viterbi Early Career Chair in Engineering. She is also a Co-Director of CAIS, the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society at USC. Her research is focused on Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence and in particular on optimization and its interface with machine learning, causal inference, and economics. Her work is motivated by complex societal problems, such as homelessness, substance use and suicide prevention, and biodiversity conservation. Prior to joining USC, she was lecturer in the Operations Research and Statistics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a postdoctoral research associate in the Operations Research Center at MIT. She is a TED AI speaker, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Imperial College Emerging Alumni Leader Award, and the INFORMS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ambassador Program Award. She is an associate editor for Operations Research, Operations Research Letters, and Computational Management Science.

The event is supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) 17931929

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DEM Lunch Seminar: Phebe Vayanos, University of Southern California, LA