Peter Barber, “Reimagining Social Housing”

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Event Description

Peter Barber is the founder of Peter Barber Architects , an award-winning practice based in London known for its radical approach to social housing and urban planning. In this lecture, Barber will highlight some of his firm’s award-winning social housing projects, such as Donnybrook Quarter , a 40-unit, low-rise, high-density, mixed-use project near Victoria Park in London, and Edgewood Mews , a 97-unit urban block arranged around a pedestrianized street near  North Circular Road in London’s Barnet borough. He will review the political and ideological contexts in which these and other projects were conceived and describe his firm’s analog design process, which makes extensive use of hand sketches and hand-made models.

Speaker

Peter Barber is the founder of Peter Barber Architects , an award-winning practice based in London known for its innovative approaches to social housing and urban planning. Driven by a consistent commitment to radical solutions and excellence in design, Barber and his colleagues have created groundbreaking mixed-use and residential schemes as well as many award-winning buildings, projects, and planning studies. In 2022, Barber received the Soane Medal, which recognizes architects, educators, and critics who have enriched the public understanding of architecture. He and his firm also have won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Neave Brown Award for Housing and the Royal Academy’s Grand Prize for Housing. Barber was also awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for his services to architecture and a lifetime achievement award from The Architect’s Journal and serves as an elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Barber worked with Richard Rogers, Will Alsop, and Jestico+Whiles prior to establishing his own practice and is currently a lecturer and reader in architecture at the University of Westminster.

 

Margot Kushel, “The Toxic Problem of Poverty + Housing Costs: Lessons from New Landmark Research About Homelessness”

Event Description

For over three decades, Dr. Margot Kushel has both cared for people who experience homelessness and studied the causes, consequences, and solutions to homelessness, particularly in California, which is home to 30 percent of the people experiencing homelessness in the US. Kushel, who recently led the largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s, will discuss insights that have emerged from her work as a physician and researcher. Her research has shown that California’s homelessness crisis is primarily due to the lack of housing that low-income households can afford. Moreover, contrary to popular beliefs, the majority of people experiencing homelessness in the state were born in California. She will draw on the findings to discuss policies, programs, and practices that would help people experiencing homelessness and those who are at risk of becoming homeless.

Speaker

Margot Kushel, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and Director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Her research focuses on efforts to prevent and end homelessness and mitigate the effects of housing instability on healthcare outcomes with the aim of informing the development of programs and policies to end homelessness. Dr. Kushel was the lead author of The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, a landmark report published in 2023. The largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s, it provided a comprehensive look at the causes and consequences of homelessness in California and recommended policy changes to shape programs in response.

Featured Panelists

Peggy Bailey is the Vice President for Housing and Income Security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), where she oversees CBPP’s work to protect and expand access to affordable housing. Bailey, whose work is centered in identifying the ways racism and discrimination in housing policy have resulted in disinvestment in communities of color and created disparate outcomes for people in marginalized groups, has also served as Senior Advisor on Rental Assistance to HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge and, before that, as CBPP’s Vice President for Housing Policy.

Dr. Jim O’Connell is the president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which he founded in 1985.  O’Connell, who also is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is the author of Stories from the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor and the editor of The Health Care of Homeless Persons: A Manual of Communicable Diseases and Common Problems in Shelters and on the Streets. His work also is the subject of Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People, a best-selling book written by Tracy Kidder.

Chris Herbert (moderator) is Managing Director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac. Herbert has extensive experience conducting research related to housing policy and urban development, particularly the financial and demographic dimensions of homeownership, and the implications for housing policy. He also has been the Joint Center’s Director of Research and was Senior Associate in the Housing and Community Development practice at Abt Associates.

Andrew Bernheimer, “Where is the Architecture? Finding Design and Community Amidst Constraints”

A recording of this event is available with audio description .

Event Description

In the 22nd Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture , Andrew Bernheimer, FAIA, will discuss what several affordable housing projects in New York City have taught him about architecture’s role in addressing housing-related challenges. His firm, Bernheimer Architecture (BA), is committed to “designing sustainable and resilient architecture by crafting productive environments for people and their communities.” BA’s wide-ranging portfolio includes numerous affordable housing developments, including: OneFlushing, a 230-unit, all-affordable intergenerational housing development in Queens; Caesura Brooklyn, a 123-unit, mixed-use, mixed-income building in the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District; and 1490 Southern Boulevard, a 115-unit, all-affordable, senior housing project in the Bronx that includes units and related services for people who previously experienced homelessness. And, in the context of a recent unionization drive at BA, Bernheimer will discuss how to do this challenging work in humane and sensitive ways.  

His remarks will be followed by a discussion with Jill Crawford , a partner at Type A Projects LLC, who has worked with BA on several affordable housing projects, and former Loeb Fellow Marc Norman , LF ’15, Associate Dean of NYU’s Shack Institute of Real Estate. Daniel D’Oca, MUP ’02, an Associate Professor in the Practice of Urban Planning at GSD, will moderate the conversation. 

AIA members who attend this event may be eligible for continuing education units. Please reach out to [email protected] if you are interested.

Speakers

Andrew Bernheimer is the founding principal of Bernheimer Architecture , a Brooklyn-based firm responsible for a wide variety of residential, civic, and cultural projects, including several award-winning, multi-unit, affordable housing developments in New York City. He edited Timber in the City (ORO Editions, 2015), which features innovative practices in wood construction and co-edited Fairy Tale Architecture (ORO Editions, 2020) with his sister, Kate Bernheimer. In 2018, Bernheimer was elevated to AIA’s College of Fellows. In addition, he is a member of the Executive Board of NYC’s Institute for Public Architecture. 

Bernheimer is also an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Parsons School of Design where he teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate architecture sequences. While Director of the MArch program at Parsons from 2012-2016, he oversaw a program known for its connections between design and practice and a distinct focus on New York City’s communities and their constructed environments. The program included a signature design-build studio and cross-disciplinary curricular opportunities with graduate programs in lighting and interior design. 

Previously, Bernheimer was a founding partner of the award-winning firm Della Valle Bernheimer. In 2009, Princeton Architectural Press published Think/Make, a monograph that documents 12 of the firm’s most innovative projects. 

Jill Crawford , is co-founder of Type A Projects, a women-owned real estate development firm focused on high-impact, affordable and supportive housing in New York City. Type A’s current work includes Bronx Point, a 540-unit affordable development with three acres of public waterfront open space and Homeward Central Harlem, a 50-unit supportive housing project for formerly homeless youth.  Type A is also currently working with NYC Health + Hospitals to develop River Commons, a 278-unit affordable and supportive building designed by Bernheimer Architecture.  Prior to starting Type A in 2013, Crawford and her co-founder, Annie Tirschwell developed over one million square feet of community schools with the nonprofit developer, Civic Builders Inc. Crawford began her real estate career managing the Upper Manhattan Historic Preservation Fund, partnering with community institutions to restore landmark properties.  She is currently a member of the Design for Freedom Working Group, an initiative focused on eradicating forced labor in building materials supply chains.   

Marc Norman is the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair in Real Estate Development & Investment, and Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University. A renowned urban planner and a veteran in the field of community development and finance, Norman is also the founder of Ideas and Action, a consulting firm. Before coming to NYU in July 2022, he was an Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan where he also served as Faculty Director of the Weiser Center for Real Estate at the university’s Ross School of Business. A former Loeb Fellow, Norman also has extensive experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors and has worked collaboratively to develop or finance over 2,000 housing units totaling more than $400 million in total development costs. 

Daniel D’Oca (moderator) is an Associate Professor in the Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he coordinates the second-semester core urban planning studio and leads interdisciplinary, client-based option studios on a range of equity-related topics. He also chairs the Joint Center for Housing Studies’ Faculty Advisory Committee. In addition, D’Oca is principal and co-founder of Interboro Partners, an award-winning planning, urban design, and architectural design firm based in Brooklyn and Detroit.  

The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge, “Building the World We Want to See: What Do We Want Our Legacy to Be?”

Event Information

All are invited to watch and participate online in this program by tuning into this page at the noted start time. No pre-registration is required.  Online audience members will be able to submit questions throughout the event using Vimeo’s Q&A function. If you would like to submit questions for the speaker in advance of the event, please click here. Harvard ID holders are also welcome to attend programs in person, except where an event is listed as online only. Live captioning will be provided during this event livestream. Learn more about accessibility services at public programs.

This event recording is also available to watch with audio description .

Event Description

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge believes the country’s housing issues do not fit into a one-size-fits-all approach. We need policies and programs that can adapt to meet a community’s unique housing challenges. She is committed to making the dream of homeownership – and the security and wealth creation that comes with it – a reality for more Americans. Under her leadership, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is working to eradicate the growing homelessness issue, put an end to discriminatory practices in the housing market, and ensure that our fair housing rules are doing what they are supposed to do: opening the door for families who have been systematically locked out for generations to buy homes and have a fair shot at achieving the American dream. 

The Joint Center for Housing Studies’ annual John T. Dunlop Lecture  honors a distinguished member of the Harvard community in recognizing the contributions of Professor John T. Dunlop. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Economics Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Professor Dunlop was United States Secretary of Labor during the Ford administration. Professor Dunlop had a lifetime career in mediation, arbitration, and dispute resolution. A commitment to the nation’s construction industries and housing also distinguished his work. He served as chairman of the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee and played a role in the establishment of the National Institute for Building Sciences. 

After the lecture, Secretary Fudge will be in conversation with Jerold Kayden, the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Speaker

Secretary Marcia L. Fudge is the 18th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Throughout her career, Secretary Fudge has worked to help low-income families, seniors, and communities across the country. She served as U.S. Representative for the 11th Congressional District of Ohio from 2008-21, and was a member of several Congressional Caucuses and past Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1999, Secretary Fudge was elected the first female and first African American mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, a position she held for two terms. Secretary Fudge’s career in public service began in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, rising to the rank of Director of Budget and Finance. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business from The Ohio State University and law degree from the Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall School of Law. 

Follow Secretary Fudge on Twitter and Instagram .

Michael Maltzan, “Addressing Homelessness: What Can (and Can’t) Architecture Do?”

The GSD is pleased to present a series of talks and webinars broadcast to our audiences via Zoom.

*This lecture will be ONLINE ONLY. For security reasons, virtual attendees must register. Scroll down to find complete instructions for how to register.

Event Description

Over the past two decades, Michael Maltzan, FAIA, MArch ’88, and his firm Michael Maltzan Architecture have designed a variety of innovative, permanent supportive housing developments for the Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles. Founded in 1995, Maltzan’s award-winning practice is dedicated to the design and construction of projects which engage their context and community through a concentrated exploration of movement and perception. The Skid Row projects serve formerly homeless people who are HIV-positive, the elderly, veterans, and/or those suffering from chronic physical and psychological disabilities. They not only provide affordable housing but also critical social infrastructure, such as health care and supportive services, that help individuals lead more stable lives.

While Maltzan has cautioned that architects have to be realistic about architecture’s ability to create wholesale social change, he has also asserted that architecture can’t stand back, and must assume an active role in the realization of sociological and psychological benefits that entities like the Housing Trust are trying to make possible.

In the 20th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture , presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Maltzan will discuss his work with the Skid Row Housing Trust and what it suggests about the ways in which architecture and other design professions can help address problems of housing affordability and homelessness. After the lecture, Mike Alvidrez , CEO Emeritus of the Skid Row Housing Trust and Helen Leung , Co-Executive Director of LA-Más, a non-profit urban design organization in Los Angeles, will provide comments and context about the lower-income and underserved communities they serve in Los Angeles. Sarah Whiting,  Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the GSD will moderate the discussion.

Speaker

Michael Maltzan , FAIA, MArch ’88, founded Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc. in 1995. Through a deep belief in architecture’s role in our cities and landscapes, he has succeeded in creating new cultural and social connections across a range of scales and programs. Michael received a Master of Architecture degree with a Letter of Distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and he holds both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design where he received the Henry Adams AIA Gold Medal. His designs have been published and exhibited internationally and he regularly teaches and lectures at architectural schools around the world. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award.

Having devoted 28 years to ending homelessness with Skid Row Housing Trust , 14 of those years as Executive Director then Chief Executive Officer, Mike Alvidrez continues to serve the Trust following his retirement in a newly created External Ambassador role. He continues to promote the work of the Trust’s affordable and permanent supportive housing services as an evidence-based solution to breaking the cycle of homelessness. Mike is an advocate of Housing First, an innovative strategy that prioritizes the security of a permanent home as the first step to ending homelessness. Thanks to his hands-on experience, he pioneered the development of permanent supportive housing to help those facing the toughest challenges to obtaining stability and wellness. During his tenure, the Trust has become a nationally recognized provider of permanent supportive housing that is on the forefront of building and program design. By creating beautiful, dignified buildings with on-site support services, the Trust alters both how people view our residents and how our residents view themselves. A native Angelino with a Master’s degree from UCLA’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Mike previously worked for Community Corporation of Santa Monica.

Helen Leung , MPP ‘11, is the Co-Executive Director of LA-Más , a non-profit urban design organization that helps lower-income and underserved communities shape their future through policy and architecture. She is a Los Angeles native raised in the Frogtown neighborhood by a working class, first generation Chinese family. Growing up in an immigrant community, she deeply identifies with the rich diversity that makes Los Angeles so unique. With mentorship from local leaders, Helen became the first person in her family to go to college. Helen joined LA-Más because of her passion to explore strategies that minimize displacement pressures that come with gentrification. Helen provides leadership at LA-Más by ensuring all projects are grounded in local need and systemic change. Helen has extensive policy and community-based experience having worked for former LA City Council President and current Mayor Eric Garcetti. Her national policy and program experience includes her work as Program Associate at Living Cities, fellowship at the Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, and internship at the Office of Political Affairs at the White House under President Obama’s administration. Helen serves on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, a member of Genesis LA’s Community Advisory Board, and on the Board of the Elysian Valley Arts Collective. She holds a master’s degree in public policy and urban planning from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania.

How to Join

Registration for this event has closed. Please tune in to the livestream on the Harvard GSD YouTube channel to watch this event.

Live captioning will be provided during this event. A transcript will be available roughly two weeks after the event, upon request.

POSTPONED “Addressing Homelessness: What Can (and Can’t) Architecture Do?” with Michael Maltzan

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this event was postponed to October 2020. 

 

Event Description

Over the past two decades, Michael Maltzan, FAIA, MArch ’88, and his firm Michael Maltzan Architecture have designed a variety of innovative, permanent supportive housing developments for the Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles. Founded in 1995, Maltzan’s award-winning practice is dedicated to the design and construction of projects which engage their context and community through a concentrated exploration of movement and perception. The Skid Row projects serve formerly homeless people who are HIV-positive, the elderly, veterans, and/or those suffering from chronic physical and psychological disabilities. They not only provide affordable housing but also critical social infrastructure, such as health care and supportive services, that help individuals lead more stable lives.

While Maltzan has cautioned that architects have to be realistic about architecture’s ability to create wholesale social change, he has also asserted that architecture can’t stand back, and must assume an active role in the realization of sociological and psychological benefits that entities like the Housing Trust are trying to make possible.

In the 20th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture , presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Maltzan will discuss his work with the Skid Row Housing Trust and what it suggests about the ways in which architecture and other design professions can help address problems of housing affordability and homelessness. After the lecture, Mike Alvidrez , CEO Emeritus of the Skid Row Housing Trust and Helen Leung , Co-Executive Director of LA-Más, a non-profit urban design organization in Los Angeles, will provide comments and context about the lower-income and underserved communities they serve in Los Angeles.

Kimberly Dowdell, “Diverse City: How Equitable Design and Development Will Shape Urban Futures”

How can real estate development and sustainable design be used to foster equitable and inclusive redevelopment in cities? That’s the challenge that has animated the career of Kimberly Dowdell MPA ’15, an architect, developer, and educator who is focused on leading projects that help contribute to the revitalization of cities like Detroit, and also preparing the next generation of urban change agents.

Dowdell, who will give the 19th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture, presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, is a partner at Century Partners, an innovative real estate development firm in Detroit focused on equitable neighborhood revitalization, and a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She is also the new president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). In that position, she has outlined an ambitious agenda focused on helping to ensure that African-American architects—who make up less than two percent of the profession in a country that is 13 percent African-American—play a larger role in efforts to revitalize America’s cities.

 

In her lecture, Dowdell, who has designed or managed over $100 million in assets in her work as an architect, real estate project manager, government staffer and developer, will draw on her varied experiences to discuss steps needed to create neighborhoods in which all people feel safe and empowered to build a brighter urban future for generations to come.

For more information, please visit the Joint Center for Housing Studies’ webpage.

Raphael W. Bostic, “Fair Housing in the U.S.: Past, Present and Future?”

Please join us as we welcome Raphael W. Bostic (AB ’87) for the annual John T. Dunlop Lecture, which honors the late John T. Dunlop, a distinguished scholar and a longtime supporter of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Dunlop served as Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Ford Administration, and chair of Harvard’s Economics Department, among other positions.

For many, fair housing has been a linchpin of gaining access to opportunities that facilitate the realization of the American Dream. However, the efficacy of federal efforts to promote fair housing has varied considerably over time and across Administrations. Where do we now stand in terms of fair housing? What will the future hold? This year’s lecture reviews the experiences we have had with fair housing since the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and looks forward to consider its prospects in the coming years, with an eye towards opportunities and risks.

Raphael W. Bostic, (AB ’87) has been president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta since June 2017. This year he also is serving as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the monetary policymaking body of the Federal Reserve.

From 2012 to 2017, Bostic was the Judith and John Bedrosian Chair in Governance and the Public Enterprise at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California (USC), where he first joined the faculty in 2001.  From 2015 to 2016, he also served as interim director of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate and from 2016 to 2017 he chaired the center’s Governance, Management, and Policy Process department. The founding director of USC’s Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast, his research has spanned many fields, including home ownership, housing finance, neighborhood change, and the role of institutions in shaping policy effectiveness.

From 2009 to 2012 Bostic served as the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In that role, he was a principal adviser to the secretary on policy and research, helping the secretary and other principal staff make informed decisions on HUD policies and programs, as well as on budget and legislative proposals.

He also has served on many boards and advisory committees, including the California Community Reinvestment Corporation, Abode Communities, NeighborWorks, the National Community Stabilization Trust, the Urban Land Institute, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, the National Economic Association, and Freddie Mac.

Bostic graduated from Harvard University with a combined major in economics and psychology and earned his doctorate in economics from Stanford University.

This event is free but requires registration. To register, click here. 

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Office of Communications.

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh

Presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

Since taking office in 2014, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has made his mark in Boston and, increasingly, on the national stage as well. A former leader of Boston’s construction trade unions who also served as a state representative, Walsh has made housing and community development central to his efforts to ensure that Boston is a “thriving, healthy, and innovative” city with “equality and opportunity for all.”

In 2014, the new administration released “Housing a Changing City: Boston 2030,” which stated that Boston needed to create 53,000 housing units to accommodate the city’s growing population. The city is expected to soon top 700,000 people for the first time since the 1950s and, in keeping with this plan, had permitted almost 20,000 new units by 2016 and was reviewing plans for about 20,000 more.

The city, which built a state-of- the-art shelter for homeless people, is also developing strategies to effectively end chronic homelessness and has launched Imagine Boston 2030, which will produce Boston’s first comprehensive plan in over 50 years.

In addition, the Walsh administration has undertaken notable efforts to keep Boston at the forefront of the global innovation economy, to strengthen its schools, expand opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities, improve police-community relations, and address Boston’s troubled history of race relations.

In recent months, Mayor Walsh has also emerged as an important voice in national debates about immigration and other key federal policies and programs that could greatly affect residents, neighborhoods and communities in Boston and other cities.

Registration is now available.
Registration is not required to attend, but it is encouraged.

Angela Glover Blackwell

Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, of PolicyLink, started the organization in 1999 and continues to drive its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Under Ms. Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure.  A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Angela is a frequent commentator for some of the nation’s top news organizations, and she is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future. She serves on numerous boards and currently serves on The President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

Organized by the Joint Center for Housing Studies with support from the National Housing Endowment and the John T. Dunlop Professorship for Housing and Urbanization.

For accessibility accommodations, please contact the events office in advance at [email protected] or (617) 496-2414.