Chris Herbert

Christopher Herbert is Managing Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies. Dr. Herbert has extensive experience conducting research related to housing policy and urban development, both in the U.S. and abroad. A key focus of his research has been on the financial and demographic dimensions of homeownership, and the implications for homeownership policy of the recession, housing bust, and foreclosure crisis. Having previously worked at the Joint Center in the 1990s, Herbert rejoined the Center in 2010 from Abt Associates, to serve as the Director of Research. In this role, Dr. Herbert led the team responsible for producing the Center’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing and its biannual America’s Rental Housing reports, essential resources for both public and private decision makers in the housing industry.

Dr. Herbert was named managing director of the Joint Center in 2015, and oversees the Center’s diverse sponsored research programs, its local and national conferences and symposia, as well as its student fellowship programs, designed to help train and inspire the next generation of housing leaders. He is also a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the Department of Urban Planning and Design.

Dr. Herbert is co-editor of Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk After the Housing Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2014), 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 PhD and Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.