OUR TEAM
Vincent J. Reina, PhD | Faculty Director
Dr. Reina is an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. His research focuses on urban economics, low-income housing policy, household mobility,  neighborhood change, and community and economic development. Reina's work has been published in various academic journals, such as Urban Studies, Housing Policy Debate, and Journal of Housing Economics.  Dr. Reina is the 2019-202 Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. He was the recipient of the 2019 Rising Scholar Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, a Visiting School at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia from 2018-2020, a 2018 Lincoln Institute for Land Policy Scholar, the recipient of the 2016 Best Dissertation in Public Policy and Management award from the Association of Public Policy and Management, and he is currently a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow.  Dr. Reina is a Research Affiliate at the NYU Furman Center, where he was previously the Herbert Z. Gold Housing Research Fellow from 2009-2012.

Dr. Reina began his career as a Community Planning and Development Representative for the U.S. Department of Housing and Development and was then a project manager in its Division of Multifamily Housing. He also worked as a senior program officer at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, where he underwrote financing for affordable housing developments across the country, and completed a Coro fellowship.
Claudia F. Aiken, MCP | Director
 Claudia Aiken is Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn (HIP). Her research focuses on housing policy in the context of declining federal resources; racial and socioeconomic inequity; and neighborhood change. She has worked as a consultant in multiple municipal housing planning processes and has completed housing studies using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Aiken has presented at academic conferences including the American Collegiate Schools of Planning and has published in the Urban Affairs Review, Russell Sage Foundation RSF: Journal of the Social Sciences, and Cityscape (forthcoming).

​Claudia holds a Master of Science in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and a Bachelor of Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia. She has also studied urban planning in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lyon, France. Her graduate work includes a thesis on regional collaboration to promote housing affordability and “Dealing with Gentrification,” a project that examines the links between neighborhood change and housing insecurity.
Sydney Goldstein, MCP | Rental Assistance Research and Data Manager
Sydney Goldstein is Data Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn (HIP). ​Sydney focuses on the intersection of city planning and data analytics. She holds a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and her previous research has explored expanding economic opportunities in underserved areas. Combining her interest in community development with spatial analytics, she has worked to inform policy and resource allocation by developing data tools for stakeholders, such as a foreclosure early warning system that helps community lawyers better allocate their limited outreach efforts to residents at risk of property tax foreclosure.
Jamaal Green, PhD | Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Green is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses is at the intersection of housing, land-use, and economic development policy and he is particularly interested in the role that planning can play in mitigating social and political inequality. Dr. Green was previously a Research Analyst at the State of Oregon's Department of Human Services' Research and Analytics Division, and an National Science Foundation IGERT Fellow. He received his Ph.D., from the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at the Portland State University.

HIP FELLOWS
Graciela Bolanos
Graciela Bolanos is an ABSN student from El Salvador with a passion for community health. For her first undergraduate degree, she studied Community, Environment, and Development at Penn State University, and plans to dovetail her passion for rural health and sustainable development as a community nurse after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. Her interests outside her work for the Housing Initiative include small-scale farming, fermentation, and participatory democratic practices in action.
Jenna Epstein
Jenna Epstein is a Master of City Planning student concentrating in Smart Cities. After graduating in 2016 from Washington University in St. Louis, she worked as a Project Manager and Data Analyst for a digital consultancy, working on public sector projects in Washington, DC. She is passionate about using geospatial data and analytics to support communities and build more resilient cities and is an advocate for open source technology.
Isabel Harner
Isabel Harner is a Master of City Planning candidate concentrating in Housing, Community and Economic Development. Her research interests are around combatting vacancy and real estate speculation, incentives for permanently affordable housing, and sustainable neighborhood redevelopment. Previously working for Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development, she is passionate about innovative local housing policy solutions.
Julia Verbrugge
Julia Verbrugge is a first-year Master of City and Regional Planning student studying Community and Economic Development. She graduated from Brown University in 2015 and spent the last 5 years in San Francisco working in real estate, urban development, and transit reform. When she’s not pondering ways to better support small businesses or rethinking traditional economic development strategies, she’s biking around Philly and drinking coffee.
Xuezhu (Gillian) Zhao
Xuezhu (Gillian) Zhao, originally from Beijing China, is a Master of City Planning candidate concentrating in Smart Cities. Passionate about urban informatics and cultural heritage, she is enthusiastic about the possibility of leveraging data analytics to promote vibrant and sustainable communities, especially in the realm of economic development and transportation planning. In her free time, Gillian can be found cooking fusion dishes or reading detective fiction
Whether you're a policymaker, researcher, journalist, student, funder, or just someone who cares about housing - we would love to hear from you. Email us at housinginitiative@design.upenn.edu.