Katherine O'Regan

Katherine O''Regan is Professor of Public Policy and Planning at NYU Wagner. She also serves as Faculty Director of the Master of Science in Public Policy Program and Faculty Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.  She spent April, 2014-January, 2017 in the Obama Administration, serving as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and spent ten years teaching at the Yale School of Management prior to joining the Wagner faculty in 2000. She teaches courses in microeconomics, poverty, program evaluation, and urban economics, and has received teaching awards from Berkeley, Yale, and NYU.

Her primary research interests are at the intersection of poverty and space --the conditions and fortunes of poor neighborhoods and those who live in them.  Her research includes work on a variety of affordable housing topics, from whether the Low Income Tax Credit contributes to increased economic and racial segregation, to whether the presence of housing voucher households contributes to neighborhood crime rates.   Recent work also includes several projects examining neighborhood transitions over the past few decades, including possible broad causes (changes in federal housing policy, and changes in crime, in particular), and outcomes (including possible displacement, and improvements in neighborhood conditions).  Among others, she has served on the board of the Reinvestment Fund, the advisory board for NYU''s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, and the editorial board for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

Areas of Expertise

Cities

City Management

Economics

Finance

Housing & Community Development

Inequality

Policy Analysis

Poverty

Race, Class, Gender & Diversity

Social Policy

Urban Planning

Urban Policy