Christopher E. Herbert has been appointed managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, effective Jan. 1. He replaces Eric Belsky, who left the center this summer to take a position with the Federal Reserve.
"We are pleased that Chris has agreed to take on the leadership of the Center," Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, said in a statement. "His depth and breadth of experience in housing research and public policy will be invaluable to the center and the university as we continue to inform and facilitate public dialogue on the importance of housing in the context of 21st century challenges."
Since 2010, Herbert has served as the Joint Center’s director of research, leading the team responsible for producing the center’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing report. He has also overseen the center’s sponsored research programs as well as its ongoing analysis of important trends in housing, residential settlement patterns, and affordability challenges.
Herbert’s own research focuses on the economic and demographic dimensions of homeownership; access to credit; and the challenges to affordability and access in the wake of the recession, housing bust and foreclosure crisis. His paper on the continued importance of homeownership in building assets for low- and moderate-income Americans was the basis for a recent New York Times editorial.
The appointment includes an academic role at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where Herbert will teach a course in the Department of Urban Planning and Design in the spring of 2015. He will also oversee the center’s fellowship programs, as well as its array of public programs, symposia and events.
Having previously worked at the Joint Center in the 1990s, Herbert rejoined the center in 2010 from Abt Assoc., where he was senior associate in the Housing and Community Development practice. He is co-editor of Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk After the Housing Crisis, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Community Development Research Advisory Council and the Center for Responsible Lending Research Advisory Council. He holds a doctorate in public policy from Harvard University, and received his undergraduate degree in history from Dartmouth College.
