Jennifer Molinsky

Project Director, Housing and Aging Society Program

Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design

Jennifer Molinsky is a Senior Research Associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design. Jennifer manages the Center’s research on housing for older adults. She was lead author on several publications, including The State of the Nation’s Housing for Older Adults 2018 and 2019; Older Households 2015-2035: Projections and Implications for Housing a Growing Population (2016); and Housing America’s Older Adults: Meeting the Needs of an Aging Population (2014). She speaks widely on the importance of suitable and affordable housing for America’s older adults and has written about the role of housing in wellbeing and health in older age. Jennifer’s work has also focused on housing affordability. She was a co-editor of the 2018 book A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality and the 2014 book Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk After the Housing Crisis.

Prior to joining the Center, Jennifer served as Chief Planner for Long Range Planning in Newton, MA; researcher at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Associate Director of Issues at the Municipal Art Society of New York; and as a member of the Planning Boards in Cambridge and Newton. Jennifer has also held positions with Abt Associates and with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ government housing finance practice, where she worked on projects related to housing finance, affordable housing, and community development. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from MIT, a Masters of Public Affairs-Urban and Regional Planning from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and a B.A. from Yale.