Student research connects housing instability to children’s health
As a student, Satya Fisher ’23 teamed up with Assistant Professor Jaeyong Yoo on research project that was recently published – a project that has led Fisher into a career in affordable housing policy and development.
In 2022, Kelly Avery, associate professor of practice in property management in what is now the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design at Virginia Tech, invited Alexandra Jackiw, an emeritus member of the Property Management Advisory Board and the COO of Hayes Gibson Property Services, to present a guest lecture to students in Avery’s Affordable and Specialized Housing course.
Avery later invited the students to join Jackiw for a dinner at the Maroon Door – a group that included Satya Fisher ’23 – and the event quickly turned into an evening-long discussion on affordable housing topics.
“After dinner, she pulled me aside and said, ‘You have got to do everything you can to support Satya’s interest in the affordable housing industry because he would be such an asset,’” Avery said. “For someone of Alex’s industry stature to note Satya’s interest and depth of knowledge on the topic made me proud of him.”
Fisher achieved even more recognition recently when research he began as an undergraduate student was published in early March in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Working with Jaeyong Yoo, assistant professor of property management, Fisher examined whether housing instability is connected to children’s health outcomes. Their findings showed that housing instability serves as a strong predictor of increased adverse childhood experiences and a greater likelihood of negative long-term health outcomes.
“It was great to get that published because we’ve been working on it since 2022,” Fisher said. “It was a lot of constant refinement and making sure that what we had was a methodology. Then all those pieces were well vetted by other researchers to make sure that what we had conveyed the conclusions that we’d come to.”
Starting from home
Fisher’s interest in housing instability stemmed from his days growing up in Maui, Hawaii – one of the most expensive places to live in the United States and a place where a lack of affordable housing presents a challenge for families. Drawn by those interests and family ties to Southwest Virginia, he enrolled at Virginia Tech to pursue a degree in real estate from the Pamplin College of Business.
During his senior year, Fisher worked in an AmeriCorps position in Wytheville that focused on affordable housing development projects. Community leaders there received a grant from a health care provider interested in understanding whether poor health outcomes were connected to housing instability in the region, and that piqued Fisher’s curiosity.
The experience reinforced Fisher’s sense that housing policy and public health were deeply intertwined — and that rigorous research could help communities make better decisions. He shared his questions and experiences with Avery, who was teaching him in one of her property management courses.
Avery recommended that he turn his observations into an undergraduate research project with Yoo, whose work examines housing and well-being. A cross-college collaboration between the Pamplin College of Business and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences – the previous home of the Department of Housing and Resource Management before the university moved it to the College Architecture, Arts, and Design in 2025 – thus transpired.
“Here was a student who was curious and wanted to work with property management faculty on a research project,” Avery said. “Given the interdisciplinary nature of our field, screening for research participation by major did not even cross our minds.”
From classroom conversation to published research
Housing instability — often defined by frequent moves, overcrowding, or difficulty paying rent or utilities — affects millions of families across the country. Researchers have long documented how housing shapes economic opportunity, but Fisher quickly discovered that less attention had been paid to how unstable housing conditions affect children’s health over time.
That gap became the foundation of his research.
Under Yoo’s mentorship, Fisher took on every phase of the research process, from literature review to data analysis to manuscript preparation.
“We met weekly to develop our research,” Yoo said. “We talked about the policy, the research questions, and then we talked about how we could collect the data to test our questions. Then we collected several resources, but we ended up choosing the National Survey of Children’s Health.
“At the time, Satya was new to academic research, so I worked closely with him throughout the entire process, from refining his initial ideas into clear research questions to conducting and interpreting the results.”
Their paper reflected their findings. It included numbers and suggestions on how to bring more attention to housing instability and health within an existing assessment of a family’s housing situation. Suggestions included annual checkups and health screenings to break the linkage between housing instability and children’s health.
In August 2023, Fisher and Yoo presented their research at the Dennis Dean Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship Conference at Virginia Tech. Their research and presentation won first place in the policy category.
Three years later, seeing their work published brings additional satisfaction.
“For me, this project represents the value of undergrad research and mentorship,” Yoo said. “It is interesting to see a student's early interest grow into a meaningful academic and professional direction. As a faculty member, it's my rewarding point.”
“Dr. Yoo has been great,” Fisher said. “I know that a lot of times when undergrads will do research, or even graduate students, with a professor, you get pigeonholed into doing one specific part of a paper. But I really got to see all aspects of it.”
Research with ripple effects
The impact of the project didn’t end with publication.
Fisher credits the research experience with helping him stand out as a candidate for competitive roles in housing and policy organizations after graduation. He landed a project manager position with Habitat for Humanity in New York City — one of the most expensive housing markets in the country – and now oversees affordable housing development projects.
That role, in turn, opened the door to a yearlong policy fellowship with Housing Hawaii’s Future, a nonprofit focused on addressing the state’s housing crisis. During the fellowship, Fisher produced two policy memos. In addition, he now serves on the Affordable Housing Commission for the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where he lives and commutes into New York City.
“The research project at Virginia Tech was the first piece that really snowballed into allowing me to do a lot of these other things,” Fisher said. “But it also has been an eye opener on looking at other things that could be researched. I think that I have much more of an appreciation for research and wanting to do that, and wanting to be a lifelong learner, because of this first entry into it through my time at Virginia Tech.”
What comes next
As Fisher looks ahead, he sees research as a foundation — not an endpoint. And that has him mulling over options that could affect his future.
He recently earned acceptance into the University of California-Berkeley’s Master of City Planning program, and he and Yoo have discussed working together on other projects. Either builds on questions first explored during his undergraduate research at Virginia Tech.
“I always want to work in housing, or at least in public service in some way,” Fisher said. “I think that a next step would be doing more of this research and then turning research into policy. … Being able to be the bridge between research and policy would be a next step that I’d be very interested in.”
