WASHINGTON—Documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo has joined The Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow in domestic policy studies, focusing on homelessness.

Rufo, who has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, currently is the director for the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the Discovery Institute. He also serves as a contributing editor of City Journal, where he covers poverty, homelessness, addiction, crime, and other afflictions.

“Homelessness is not primarily a housing problem—it’s a human problem that involves addiction, mental illness, and the collapse of the family,” says Rufo, who has published a Heritage report that details the failure of the federal government’s Housing First agenda and promotes homelessness policies that prioritize treatment and a path to self-sufficiency. “Working with Heritage scholars to address how federal programs make homelessness worse will bring policymakers the full picture of how to implement reforms that help the homeless."

Rufo spent five years in three “forgotten American cities”—Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California—to gather intimate stories of Americans on the edge to produce his feature-length documentary America Lost. The film reveals the dramatic decline of the American interior through a combination of emotional personal stories and thoughtful conservative commentary. Ultimately, the film offers a glimpse of hope for rebuilding America’s families and communities from the bottom up.

“Chris has spent years talking to Americans impacted by homelessness and reporting on the ground in distressed areas,” says Marie Fishpaw, director of domestic policy studies at Heritage. “His firsthand experience and breadth of knowledge about government homelessness policies will provide Heritage with cutting-edge research that policymakers can use to craft policies that help some of the most vulnerable among us.”

Rufo is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University and a Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow.