Harris Core Project: Tackling Homelessness in San Francisco and Tariffs in Pennsylvania

Drawing on the rigorous analytical training of the Harris School of Public Policy MPP Core curriculum, four student teams tackled real-world policy challenges in a classroom packed with their University of Chicago professors and peers.

Two teams walked away with $1,000 prizes.

Their winning policy memos now go to two public sector clients — the mayor of San Francisco and a Pennsylvania congressman. Each approached Harris in search of policy perspectives.

For San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, student teams explored whether to use public camping bans to address chronic homelessness. For U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican serving on the House Ways and Means Committee, the teams zeroed in on the impact of tariffs and the political constraints that shape U.S. trade policy.

The action on May 14 capped the Harris Core Project. A six-week course for first-year Master of Public Policy students, the Project is aimed at connecting Core classroom instruction with actual policymaking. The four finalist teams had been whittled down from a larger pool.

 “The idea of the Core Project was to make sure that while we were learning technical skills, we were always thinking back to the kind of problems that motivate people to come to policy school in the first place,” said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, dean and Sydney Stein Professor at Harris. “We didn’t want to forget that we were here to learn how to think about policy and to change outcomes in society.”  

Bueno de Mesquita was one of four judges who chose the winning tariffs team — Prerna Panda, Rachna, Sindhuja Reddy and Ayan Sarkar— all 2027 MPP candidates, and the winning homelessness team — Khrystyna Dmytryshyn, a 2026 MPP candidate.

Dmytryshyn, a team of one, is from Ukraine and the morning of the Project finals, she said, she’d woken to news that Kyiv was the target of a massive, deadly Russian drone attack. She also has attended the Kyiv School of Economics and said she would donate her $1,000 Core Project prize to the school’s scholarship fund. 

“While I had the privilege of spending this year in the U.S., many of my classmates in Kyiv lived through attacks like this almost daily,” she said.  

Her comments were met with applause, which punctuated that and many other points during the 90-minute event held at the Harris School Keller Center. Teams were competing, but teams, professors, and audience members were generous with praise for students and their presentations. 

The presentations were fast and detailed — about 10 minutes each. Teams illustrated their points with slides and directed their pitches to Lurie and Smucker, though the officials were not there. After each presentation, teams defended their findings to the judges who asked about research and complementary policies.

Harris Associate Professor Alexander Fouirnaies, one of the judges, provided context for the Project, supplying essential background on Lurie and Smucker and the communities they serve.

David Chrisinger, the executive director of the Harris Writing Workshop, ensured teams hit their marks and provided encouragement. Also judging were Ryan Kellogg, Harris’ Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor and Deputy Dean, and Nate Vellekoop, a Harris assistant instructional professor.

Judges were not the only ones asking questions. At the end when they huddled in the hall to choose the winners, it was the audience’s turn. Attendees asked about the presentations and about which Core class the teams relied on most.

Analytical Politics (AP) was the overwhelming response, but Microeconomics and Stats got mentions as well. Microeconomics, team members said, helped them frame the progression of tariffs; statistics helped them analyze data. However, students emphasized that AP was so valuable because it helped teach them how policymaking actually works such as through balancing relationships and understanding nuances and it taught skills like non-linear thinking. 

Fouirnaies teaches AP and described the room as feeling “almost like an AP class here.”

Before students launched into their policy pitches, he described the clients, calling Smucker an interesting political figure: a congressman from southern Pennsylvania’s 11th District whose background in manufacturing and upbringing in an Amish community gave him a unique connection to the tariff debate and the complexity of modern policymaking. 

Talk turned next to San Francisco and Mayor Lurie, the Levi Strauss heir who came from the nonprofit world and took office in 2025, promising to get homeless people “off the street and on the path to stability.”

With the U.S. Supreme Court approving public camping bans, and teams advising the mayor of San Francisco, the question becomes: Should the city use bans or not? “What,” Fouirnaies asked, “would be the consequences if you decided to use this tool, basically criminalizing homelessness in San Francisco?”

None of these are easy questions, he added. 

And then the students were off, pushing their answer as the best solution.

“Good evening. Congressman Smucker, thank you for your time. This is Sindhuja with my teammates, and we are here to talk about how we can prioritize Pennsylvanian workers while strengthening the President's tariff agenda because we map a real disconnect that affects your district every single day. … “

There is, Bueno de Mesquita said, one piece of the Core Project that isn’t so widely discussed “but that we believe in very deeply.” That is, he said, “one of the great things about doing the capstone piece of policy analysis at the end of the first MPP year is that it helps you all, I hope, to see how far you have come.”

Here’s a look at the winning and runner-up teams: 

Tariffs Team 1 (winner)

Putting Pennsylvania Workers First: Strengthening the President's Tariff Agenda

This team argued that Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs are economically harming Pennsylvania’s 11th District.

Team members said that although the district has no primary steel or aluminum producers, it contains tens of thousands of workers affected by higher input costs and foreign retaliatory tariffs. 

Their recommendations were threefold: restore targeted tariff exemptions for downstream manufacturers, require impact assessments before imposing tariffs, and coordinate more closely with allies like Canada while focusing trade pressure on China.

In a LinkedIn post after the May 14 event, Sarkar said the Core Project is meant to put first year Harris coursework, cost-benefit analysis, political economy, quantitative methods, and policy writing “into a single piece of work that an actual congressional office could use.”

“That framing forced a level of rigor I hadn't fully appreciated until we were inside it, with every recommendation stress-tested against the district's political reality,” he said.

Tariffs Team 2 (runner-up)

Reforming Section 232 Tariffs: Restore PA-11 Economic Competitiveness

This team urged Smucker to reform Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, arguing that Pennsylvania’s 11th District bears the costs while other regions reap the benefits.

The presenters said the tariffs have sharply increased costs for Lancaster and York County manufacturers that rely on imported steel and aluminum, and retaliatory tariffs from countries including China and Canada have hurt local agriculture. They argued that upstream steel producers outside the district benefit most, leaving PA-11 manufacturers and farmers at a disadvantage.

To address this, the team proposed three reforms: reducing tariffs and mending fences with Canada during upcoming United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement negotiations, creating automatic exemptions for downstream manufacturers harmed by tariffs, and requiring periodic economic reviews before tariffs are renewed or expanded.

The students concluded that targeted reforms could protect local jobs and competitiveness while still supporting broader national security goals and the Trump administration’s trade agenda.

Homelessness Team 1 (runner-up)

Cheaper and More Humane Alternatives to Encampment Bans

Mayor Lurie should not rely on encampment bans to address homelessness in San Francisco, this team said, arguing that the policy only moves unhoused people around the city rather than reducing homelessness. 

Sweeps, they said, do not increase shelter use because they do not increase shelter capacity. But sweeps do disrupt access to health care, medications, housing services, and personal documents while increasing overdose risks and long-term instability. They also argued that enforcement and incarceration are costly, especially important as San Francisco faces a large budget deficit.

They recommended expanding motel conversion shelters as a faster, less expensive form of non-congregate housing. Converted motels provide safer, more stable shelter options, the team members said, and pointed to successful examples in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

The team concluded that housing-centered strategies would be more humane, fiscally sustainable, and effective than punitive encampment bans.

Homelessness Team 2 (winner)

Closing the Gap: From Camping Bans to Stable Exits in San Francisco

A strategic framework for leveraging public-private capacity to reduce unsheltered homelessness — without expanding the public budget. 

Homelessness in San Francisco should be addressed primarily through coordinated public-private partnerships rather than expanded enforcement or new taxes. That was the view from Khrystyna Dmytryshyn.

She argued that San Francisco has sufficient resources through philanthropy, major corporations, and civic networks, but it lacks coordination to deploy them effectively. She pointed to Mayor Lurie’s background in philanthropy and business fundraising as a key advantage for mobilizing private support at scale.

Citing research and examples from cities including Austin, Texas, she argued that criminalization or encampment bans do not reduce homelessness long-term and often increase costs.

Her proposal focused on three actions: require shelter offers before issuing citations, expand donor-funded public-private partnerships through a citywide summit, and build employer-based reintegration programs that link housing, job training, and employment.