USC professor studied homelessness and worked to address it
Madeleine Stoner, a USC professor of social work who was an expert on homelessness and advised policymakers on how to prevent it, died Sunday at her Westwood home. She was 70.
The cause of death was cancer, said her husband, USC professor Ralph Fertig.
Stoner, the Richard M. and Ann L. Thor professor in urban social development, divided her time between academic work and applying her research in the community. She spent a recent sabbatical as director of social services for SRO Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that develops housing on Los Angeles’ skid row.
She was the author of “Inventing a Non-Homeless Future” (1989), which laid out an agenda for policymakers, and “The Civil Rights of Homeless People” (1995), which analyzed litigation and advised advocates on homeless people’s rights to housing, minimum standards of health and welfare, education, family preservation, education and voting.
She also chaired the USC Urban Initiative, which brings together experts from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, history, business and healthcare, to offer solutions to the complex problems of life in metropolitan Los Angeles.
Stoner was born in New York City on Sept. 13, 1937, and grew up in Pittsburgh. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1960, followed by a master’s in planning in 1970 and a doctorate in policy and planning in 1979, both from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
During the ‘70s she held positions in Philadelphia with the Urban League and the Sidney Hillman Medical Center before moving to London to work as deputy director of the Local Organizations Divisions of the National Council for Voluntary Organizations. She also served as research assistant on healthcare issues in the British House of Commons.
In 1980 she joined the USC faculty as an assistant dean and in 1986 began teaching full time.
Her community involvements included serving on the board of directors of the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services Agency and the Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness for the city of Santa Monica.
Stoner was married three times. Her survivors include Fertig, her husband of five years who is a clinical professor of social work; two children, Alan Cushman and Katie Cushman Jacobs; two stepchildren, Tad and Jon Stoner; a brother, Stanley Ruskin; and seven grandchildren.
The funeral will be at 11 a.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 Centinela Ave., Culver City. Memorial donations may be sent to the Madeleine Stoner Scholarship Fund at the USC School of Social Work.
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