The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell will offer a series of five lectures this spring as part of the course Housing and Feeding the Homeless.

All lectures, which are free and open to the public, begin at 2:55 p.m. in 265 Statler Hall.

The series is as follows:

• March 10: Eileen O'Connell, program director of Covenant House, New York, will address issues related to homeless children, runaway and "throwaway" youth.
• March 26: Ithaca Mayor Alan Cohen, who also is owner of a local restaurant, Simeon's on the Commons, will address issues of poverty and hunger in a small city from the perspective of a restaurateur and politician.
• April 2: Robert Egger, director of the D.C. Central Kitchen, Washington, D.C., will speak about opening and operating food rescue and training programs for the homeless.
• April 9: Allison Clarke, a representative of the Politics of Food Program, Rochester (N.Y.) Roots and New York State Sustainable Agriculture Working Groups, will address the "food scarcity myth" and sustainable community agriculture, among other issues.
• April 21: Janet Tully, director of Pathways Program of Marriott International, will speak about welfare-to-work programs.

Housing and Feeding the Homeless, first offered in 1987, explores the broader issue of poverty and its symptoms, such as homelessness and hunger. The course examines, among other issues, public and private sector partnerships that address the crisis of homelessness.

"The problem of homelessness and hunger is just as bad as it was a decade ago," said Therese O'Connor, a Hotel School faculty member who teaches the course. "The only difference is that today the media no longer cover the issue."

O'Connor said little has been done to alleviate the problem of the homeless, which was brought to the public's attention in the 1980s, when the federal government greatly reduced support for public housing.

"We've slashed just about every program from community housing to care for the mentally ill," she said, "without offering any solutions other than to ask already overburdened community organizations to be responsible for finding solutions."

But O'Connor notes there are success stories to be told when it comes to housing and feeding the poor and marginalized. "This lecture series will enable us to hear how some excellent programs are addressing the needs of the poor."