Washington, DC—Several problems continue to plague the housing industry in the U.S. Affluent households continue to snap up the limited supply of homes for sale, pushing up prices and further excluding less affluent buyers from homeownership, according to Harvard University’s State of the Nation’s Housing 2021 report. Since 2019, home prices have risen nearly 30 percent. At the same time, rents have risen sharply across the U.S., affecting largely renters with low incomes and people of color. Additionally, supply chain shortages, the price of building materials, and the cost of labor have homebuilders struggling to keep up with the demand for new homes.
The American Sociological Association has compiled a list of experts who can provide sociological perspectives on issues related to the housing crisis in the U.S. These experts are available to answer media questions and provide insights for news stories.
Max Besbris is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on various aspects of residential mobility and segregation. His first book, Upsold, examines how real estate agents affect buyers' housing decisions, including what neighborhoods to live in and how much to pay. His forthcoming book with Anna Rhodes, Soaking the Middle Class, analyzes how households decide to stay or move after experiencing a climate-related disaster. In other ongoing work he studies the rental market, including how COVID rates affect rent prices, how landlords target or discriminate against housing voucher holders, and how online housing advertisements affect renters' perceptions of neighborhood quality. Besbris’s work has been featured in numerous professional journals and a wide range of media outlets.
Robert D. Bullard is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy and Director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the Texas Southern University. Bullard, who is a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, is an award-winning author of eighteen books that address sustainable development, environmental racism, urban land use, industrial facility siting, community reinvestment, housing, transportation, climate justice, disasters, emergency response, and community resilience, smart growth, and regional equity. His accounts have appeared in numerous print outlets such as The New York Times, Associated Press, and the Nature Conservancy, and through various TV and radio shows, including the CBC Morning Show, CBS News, CNN, and NPR.
Daniel Aldana Cohen is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and serves as a faculty affiliate in the graduate program on Political Economy. Cohen works on the intersections of the climate emergency, housing, political economy, social movements, and inequalities of race and class in the United States and Brazil. He is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green Deal and is currently completing a book project called Street Fight: Climate Change and Inequality in the 21st Century City. Cohen is also Founding Co-Director of the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank. He led the research for the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, which was introduced to Congress in 2019 and again in 2021. His work has been featured in numerous professional journals and edited volumes. Cohen has been cited for his research and public engagement in The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Vox, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Huffington Post, Energy & Environment News, Gizmodo, and elsewhere.
Amber R. Crowell is Associate Professor of Sociology at the California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on areas of residential segregation, housing, and social inequality, which is integrated into her housing advocacy and work alongside community organizers. She is currently focusing on new methods for measuring and analyzing residential segregation, in addition to researching critical pedagogy and social inequalities embedded in rental housing markets. Her work has been featured in numerous professional journals and edited volumes and in The Atlantic, Valley Public Radio, and The Fresno Bee.
Meredith Greif is an Assistant Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Her research is at the intersection of race, space, and housing. She has shown how homelessness and housing insecurity result from, and perpetuate, racial and economic inequalities. Her work has highlighted the ways in which housing insecurity is self-perpetuating, leading to mental health problems, risky sexual behavior, and addiction that subsequently heighten vulnerability to future housing insecurity. Greif is currently studying supply-side sources of housing insecurity, including landlords’ business practices pertaining to evictions, harassment, property disrepair, and discrimination based on race and source of income. In her forthcoming book Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis, Greif shows how local laws and practices meant to protect low-income renters from illicit landlord instead practices perpetuate disadvantage among marginalized populations and communities, in ways that are hidden and often unintended. Her work has been featured in numerous professional journals and edited volumes.
David Madden is Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include housing, public space, urban restructuring, and critical urban theory, and he has conducted qualitative, ethnographic, and archival research in New York City and London. Madden is co-author, with Peter Marcuse, of In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. His writing has appeared in leading urban sociology journals as well as The Guardian, the Washington Post, and Jacobin.
Sarah Quinn is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, and affiliate faculty of Urban@UW and the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She uses historical research and case studies to investigate how political institutions affect the development of financial organizations and technologies. She also studies processes of moralization and classification. These studies are united by her abiding interest in how social categories interact with systems of power. In American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation, Quinn investigates the effect of political institutions on mortgage markets and shows how U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly turned to land, housing, and credit in an elusive search for widespread economic opportunity that comes without the attendant costs of political conflict, financial risk, or large-scale redistribution. Quinn's ongoing research investigates the development of federal credit programs, the complex style of American political institutions, and the moralized world of social classifications.
For more experts or resources, contact the ASA.
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About the American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non‐profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
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