She originally studied piano; she was a student of Sergei Tarnowsky, the teacher of Vladimir Horowitz.
[1] Dehavenon's research influenced a 1979 landmark ruling that affirmed a right to shelter in New York City.
She wrote a 1985 report on hunger called The Tyranny of Indifference, which contributed to the litigation in the Yvonne McCain case.
[1] She wrote Superordinate behavior in urban homes : a video analysis of request-compliance and food control behavior in two black and two white families living in New York City (1978), The tyranny of indifference and the re-institutionalization of hunger, homelessness and poor health : a study of the causes and conditions of the food emergencies in 1708 households with children in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx in 1986 (1987), The tyranny of indifference : a study of hunger, homelessness, poor health and family dismemberment in 818 New York City households with children in 1988-89 (1989), Out of sight!
[5] She undertook a career as an expert on homelessness in New York in part as a result, she said, of her own experience of suddenly becoming a single mother with no income when her first husband (Kapell) died.