Research Affiliates
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Amy Armstrong
Amy Armstrong is currently pursuing an MSc in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. She worked as the Communications and Policy Director for the Furman Center from 2006-2010. Prior to joining the Furman Center, Amy spent more than two years at the New York City Department of Small Business Services (SBS), working as Special Assistant to the Commissioner, and later as Director of Policy and Planning for the agency. Her work at SBS spanned press and communications, agency strategic planning and research, and policy development. Before landing in New York City, Amy worked on housing and community development issues on the west coast, including program development for the Portland Community Land Trust, an affordable homeownership non-profit in Portland, and serving as a Research Fellow for PolicyLink, a national advocacy organization based in Oakland, California. Amy holds a B.A. in Political Science from Reed College and was a New York City Urban Fellow. Amy was also Part Time Faculty at Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, where she taught a course in the Master’s Program in Urban Policy Analysis and Management.
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Adam Gordon
Adam Gordon is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Furman Center. At Furman, he focuses primarily on federal housing policy on building inclusive and sustainable communities and on racial discrimination in housing markets. He also was a co-organizer of Furman’s Transforming America’s Housing Policy conference in 2009. Adam has been an Equal Justice Works Fellow and currently serves as Staff Attorney at Fair Share Housing Center, the New Jersey public interest law firm that enforces the Mount Laurel doctrine, which requires that all New Jersey communities provide for a realistic opportunity for their fair share of the regional need of low- and moderate-income housing. He is also co-founder of a quarterly magazine, The Next American City, which the New York Times described as a “subtle plan to change the world.” He has authored law review articles on the historic legal infrastructure of racial discrimination in the mortgage market and remedies for exclusionary zoning under the Fair Housing Act. He holds a B.A. from Yale College and J.D. from Yale Law School.
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Mike Lens
Mike Lens is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he investigates the role that housing policy plays in neighborhood decline and revitalization and the clustering of crime, poverty and other social problems. Mike earned his Ph.D. in Public Administration from New York University, and his MPP from the University of Michigan, and is a former research associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, where he evaluated adolescent substance abuse and mental health programs and juvenile justice policy reforms. His recent and current projects include an investigation of the neighborhood conditions of households living in subsidized housing, and exploring the role that subsidized housing policy changes may have in affecting neighborhood crime and poverty rates. He is also studying whether crime depresses commercial property values and neighborhood business activity.
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Brian McCabe
Brian McCabe is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University and his M.Sc. in Geography from the London School of Economics. He previously worked at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in New York City and as a doctoral research assistant at the Furman Center. His current research with Vicki Been and Ingrid Ellen examines the impact of historic district designations on residential property values, construction activity and demographic change in New York City. He also studies the civic benefits of homeownership, investigating whether homeowners participate more actively in political life and community affairs.
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Simon McDonnell
Simon McDonnell is a senior policy analyst for the Office of Policy Research at the City University of New York (CUNY). In that role, he explores characteristics that influence retention and graduation rates for baccalaureate and associate level students He graduated with a B.A. in Economics from University College Dublin (UCD) in 2000 and after a period working for Deloitte & Touche in New York, he received an M.Sc. in Environmental Economics and Policy from UCD in 2003. This research investigated the economic and environmental impacts of an environmental levy on plastic shopping bags imposed by the Irish Government. Simon graduated from UCD with a Ph.D. in transport and environmental economics and policy in early 2007. He was in receipt of the Government of Ireland Scholarship from The Irish Research Council of Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). Simon was also Irish coordinator on a trans-European research project investigating transport sustainability - TranSust.Scan. Before joining the Furman Center, Simon spent a year as a visiting assistant professor with the Urban Planning Program and the Institute of Environmental Science and Policy (IESP) in the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Rachel Meltzer CV
Rachel Meltzer is an Assistant Professor at Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy at The New School. She teaches courses on quantitative methods and policy analysis. Prior to joining Milano she was a doctoral fellow at the Furman Center and taught courses in statistics and microeconomics at the Wagner Graduate School at NYU. Her research is broadly concerned with issues related to housing and economic development policies, and how public and private investments in these areas affect individuals, neighborhoods and cities. She has conducted research on issues related to inclusionary zoning, Business Improvement Districts and homeowners associations. Her current work also focuses on neighborhood change, and specifically, changes in retail and commercial services in neighborhoods undergoing economic and racial transitions. Her work has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Rachel earned her doctorate in Public Policy/Public Administration and M.P.A. from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and a B.A. in Psychology and Mathematics from Dartmouth College.
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Jenny Schuetz
Jenny Schuetz is a Senior Research Affiliate at the Furman Center. She received a B.A. with Highest Distinction in Economics and Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, a Master in City Planning from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University. During her studies at Harvard, Jenny received fellowships from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the Urban Land Institute. Formerly, Jenny worked for the Public Housing Strategic Consulting group of Abt Associates and the research division of the Fannie Mae Foundation and was a Teaching Fellow and Instructor for economics and statistics courses at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her current research projects with the Furman Center include the effects of zoning on rental housing in Massachusetts, the effectiveness of various policy instruments in preserving open space, and the neighborhood impacts of foreclosures.
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Claudia Ayanna Sharygin
Claudia Ayanna Sharygin is a Research Fellow at the Furman Center. She received an AB magna cum laude in economics from Harvard University in 2002, an M.Sc. in economics and philosophy from the London School of Economics in 2003, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. During her tenure at Berkeley, Claudia was a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, received further funding from Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics and the Institute of Business and Economic Research, and spent a summer conducting dissertation research at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Claudia’s research in the area of real estate focuses on the effects of housing market fluctuations on household financial decision making, including spending and investment decisions.
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Ioan Voicu
Ioan Voicu is a Senior Research Affiliate with the Furman Center. He is currently a Financial Economist for the Risk Analysis Division of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He received his M.A. in Economics from Rutgers University in 1996, and his Ph.D. in 2000. Ioan’s dissertation was entitled “The Determinants and Effects of Foreign Direct Investment in Romania.” He received an M.A. in Economics with Distinction from the Central European University in Prague, Czech Republic in 1994, and his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (with honors) from the Polytechnic Institute in Bucharest, Romania in 1988. At Rutgers, he won the Sidney Brown Prize in Economics for best student in first two years of graduate study, and the Peter Asch Memorial Prize for outstanding dissertation work. He also received a NAFSA Fellowship and an OSI-CEU Fellowship.
Ioan served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University from 1996-2000. At CUPR, he participated in the construction of the State of the Nation Cities Database, performed empirical analysis of: racial discrimination in the U.S. mortgage lending markets for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, studied the potential and limitations of mortgage innovation in fostering homeownership in the U.S. for the Fannie Mae Foundation, studied housing condition and rehabilitation needs for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and analyzed the self-employment patterns of immigrants in the U.S. As a Visiting Researcher for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, in 1994 and 1997, Ioan performed econometric analysis of determinants of location for high-growth industries in the US for the Austrian Business Agency and studied firm-level determinants of foreign direct investment in Romania. In addition to the many publications he has participated in at the Furman Center, he has published widely on the issues he studied at CUPR and the Institute for Advanced Studies.
