Research
The Impacts of Housing Policy Contexts and Residential Mobility
I study how housing policy contexts impact residential mobility and broader geographies of opportunity and segregation, particularly in high-cost metropolitan areas. Many worry that gentrification and high housing costs induce the displacement and eviction of these vulnerable groups while also limiting their access to high quality neighborhoods. Yet, our understanding of these dynamics is often limited to qualitative accounts due to the difficulties of measuring and analyzing adequate quantitative data. We also know little about how housing policy and planning interventions to address these issues, such as rezonings or (different types of) new housing supply, impacts housing access for these groups.
My research leverages novel data sources and quantitative, geospatial methods to study these dynamics, informing theory and policy. My recent and ongoing projects have explored:
- How gentrification impacts housing choices of low-income households in the New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas (Urban Studies, 2024, co-authored with Karen Chapple)
- How housing construction impacts displacement and exclusion of low- and moderate-income households in Los Angeles and San Francisco (Journal of American Planning Association, 2025, co-authored with Karen Chapple)
- How novel big data sources can help us better study household residential mobility (Cityscape, 2024, co-authored with Alex Ramiller, Madeleine Parker, and Karen Chapple)
- Whether there are increasing investor purchases of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) stocks in California and if they facilitate the displacement of renters (co-authored with Carolina Reid)
- Whether upzonings in New York City facilitate the displacement of low-income renters (co-authored with Jenna Davis, Karen Chapple)
Heterogeneity of Asian American Housing Outcomes
I am deeply interested in the profound demographic shift towards greater ethnic diversity in American cities with a focus on Asian populations. Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States. They are also a very diverse group, encompassing people with heritages from over twenty countries, and have the highest income inequality as a racial group. Although this trend requires an updated understanding of how policy and planning impact patterns of housing access and segregation that extends beyond the white-black binary paradigm, research on Asian American housing outcomes remain extremely scarce.
My dissertation, Rethinking ‘Asian’ in Housing: Ethnicity and Immigration in Asian American Homeownership, challenges the treatment of Asians as a monolithic “other” within the Black-White binary paradigm, arguing that this categorization reinforces racial inequality by perpetuating the “model minority” stereotype. I argue that prior research has obscured significant housing disparities within the diverse pan-ethnic Asian American community, and that by paying attention to this diversity, we can observe important patterns of advantage and disadvantage.
Housing Market Impacts of Immigration and Policy Responses
Although research has traditionally discussed the politicization of immigration largely through the lens of labor market competition, many countries have recently seen its growing salience in the housing affordability discourses. For example, countries such as Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore have adopted taxation and other policy tools to discourage non-citizen purchases of homes. In some cases such as Canada, public discontents about housing affordability has even led to broader discourses and impacts on restrictive immigration policies as well. I am interested in how immigration and international capital influence local housing markets and the effects of housing policies introduced to address these local impacts.
For instance, my research has examined:
- How provincial foreign buyer taxes, in response to international capital inflows into housing markets, impact rental market affordability in British Columbia and Ontario in Canada
