Practice

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Practical public and private-sector experience in law and policy has always been central to my scholarship and teaching. Before entering academia, I served as special counsel in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where my work ranged across the agency’s portfolio, from housing finance to community development to fair housing. This gave me a deep appreciation for the nexus between legal institutions, legislation and regulation, and substantive policy outcomes, particularly in housing and the urban built environment.

Latham & Watkins


After my experience at HUD, I moved to private practice, at the global law firm of Latham & Watkins. There, I had the opportunity to work for several years on general transactional commercial real estate, including real estate aspects of corporate mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and international project finance, as well as large-scale development, land-use, and planning projects. Throughout, I focused on the private-sector side of affordable multifamily housing, including clients involved in investment, syndication, development, and compliance. This time in practice made for a seamless transition to teaching courses and conducting research on real estate transactions, land use and planning, affordable housing development, and related areas.

Teaching


Throughout my two decades as an academic, I have continued my involvement in real estate, housing law, and policy. At the beginning of the Obama Administration, I took a leave and returned to HUD as Principal Deputy General Counsel, the second-ranking attorney in the agency, helping oversee a cadre of roughly 1,000 lawyers nationwide. After I returned to teaching, I consulted with HUD, continuing work I had done spearheading the legal aspects of a policy called affirmatively furthering fair housing, which created practical, data-driven tools to center equity in public housing and community development planning supported by HUD. I also served on the board of a public housing agency and of a service-enriched housing provider, both when I lived in Colorado, experiences that taught me about the challenges of implementing complex housing programs on the ground.

Recent Practice


More recently, I served for six years on the board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency, one of the largest housing bond agencies in the country, reviewing and approving transactions and helping set broader policy. Currently, I serve as Chair of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board, an administrative body charged with setting annual rent guidelines for the city’s stock of nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments. Drawing on my expertise in state and local government law, I also work with advocacy organizations and cities. In this work, I address legal and policy conflicts between local governments and states, with a focus on state constitutional home rule reform.