Vincent Reina is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Founder and Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn. Reina is a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow as well as the Editor in Chief of the journal Housing Policy Debate. His research focuses on urban economics, housing policy, and community and economic development, and has been published in various peer-reviewed journals. This work has been recognized with several awards, including article of the year by the Journal of the American Planning Association, and the Association of Public Policy and Management’s Best Dissertation Award. He was also given the Rising Scholar Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.
In 2022-2024 Reina served as the Senior Advisor for Housing and Urban Policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he worked to address the nation’s housing affordability and supply challenges, affirmatively further fair housing, increase access to homeownership, and advance equitable development and community investment.
In 2019, Reina established the Housing Initiative at Penn, which collaborated with the multiple cities, including the City of Philadelphia to develop a direct-to-tenant cash-based housing assistance program that he is leading the evaluation of through a randomized control trial designed with the City. HIP has produced a community-wide housing strategy for Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio in 2020, and the City of Cleveland’s Ten-Year Housing and Investment Plan in 2021. HIP also worked with Philadelphia and Los Angeles, as well as the County of Los Angeles and the State of California to evaluate their emergency rental assistance programs. HIP conducted a nationwide survey of 220 emergency rental assistance programs and interviewed program administrators. A collaboration with the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the NYU Furman Center, their work resulted in multiple policy-informing reports and papers. Previously, Reina and his team helped the City of Philadelphia develop its framework and strategy for preserving its stock of existing subsidized housing and worked with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation to write Philadelphia’s first citywide housing plan.
Reina was a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, a Lincoln Institute for Land Policy Scholar, and a Coro fellow. He was a Steering Committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on COVID-19, Housing, Foreclosure, and Eviction. Reina was the Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Professor at Penn’s School of Nursing, and a Visiting Scholar at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Reina previously worked at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Courses Taught at the Weitzman School
CPLN 500: Quantitative Planning Analysis Methods
CPLN 540: Introduction to Property Development
CPLN 644: Housing Policy
Education
PhD, Public Policy and Management, University of Southern California
MBA, New York University
MSc, Comparative Social Policy, University of Oxford
BS, Urban Studies, Cornell University
