Christopher Herbert

Chris Herbert is Managing Director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and a Lecturer in the GSD Department of Urban Planning and Design. 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 housing policy. Having previously worked at the 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 biennial 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 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 A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality (2018) and Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk After the Housing Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac and a member of the Advisory Board of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging. He holds a PhD and Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.