Peter Dreier is the Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor
of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental
Policy Program, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He
also coordinates the summer internship program in community
development and affordable housing. He joined the
Occidental faculty in January 1993 after serving for nine
years as Director of Housing at the Boston Redevelopment
Authority and senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray
Flynn. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago
(1977) and his B.A. from Syracuse University (1970). He
teaches Intro to American Politics, Urban Politics and
Policy, Community Organizing and Leadership, Movements for
Social Justice, and Work & Labor in America.
For three decades he has been
involved in urban policy as a scholar, a government
official, a journalist, and an advocate for reform.
Professor Dreier has written widely on American politics and
public policy, specializing in urban politics and policy,
housing policy, community development, and community
organizing. He is a frequent speaker on this topics to a
wide variety of professional, scholarly, and civic
organizations.
He is coauthor of three books
about cities and urban policy. The Next Los Angeles: The
Struggle for a Livable City (with Regina Freer, Bob
Gottlieb, and Mark Vallianatos) was published by University
of California Press in 2005. A second edition,
incorporating the election and first year of Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa's administration, was published in 2006.
Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century
(coauthored with John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom) was
published by the University Press of Kansas in 2001; a
second edition was published in 2005. It won the Michael
Harrington Book Award, given by the American Political
Science Association for the "outstanding book that
demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for
a better world." Regions That Work: How Cities and
Suburbs Can Grow Together (coauthored with Manuel
Pastor, Eugene Grigsby, and Marta Lopez-Garza) was published
by the University of Minnesota Press in 2000. It examines
the disconnect between regional economic development
strategies and community development practices in low-income
neighborhoods. Dreier also coedited (with Jennifer Wolch
and Manuel Pastor) Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy
and the Making of Southern California, published in
2005 by University of Minnesota Press. It examines the
government policies that promoted sprawl in Southern
California.
Dreier was co-author of a Brookings Institution
report on widening inequalities in America's suburbs,
Pulling Apart: Economic Segregation among Suburbs and
Central Cities in Major Metropolitan Areas, released
in October 2004. He is currently working on a report for the
Eisenhower Foundation examining the condition of U.S. cities
40 years after the urban riots of 1967. He also wrote wrote
a report for the Ford Foundation and Demos (a public policy
think tank) evaluating current federal housing programs and
recommend a variety of reforms to strengthen housing
policy's effectiveness and political constituency.
Along with economists Richard Green and Andrew
Reschovsky of the University of Wisconsin, he co-directed a
$655,000 grant from the Ford Foundation focusing on
expanding homeownership opportunities. They coordinated a
team of 12 researchers to examine the impact of federal tax
policy on homeownership and the housing industry and to
recommend new ways to design tax policy to increase the
homeownership rate, particularly among low-income
households.
Dreier's research has been funded by the Haynes
Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Century Foundation,
the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, the Ford
Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and other funders.
He is frequently quoted as an expert on housing
and urban issues, including in the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National
Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, San Diego
Union-Tribune, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Boston Globe,
Philadelphia Inquirer, and Business Week, and
has appeared on KCRW's "Which Way LA," PBS-TV's
"McNeil-Lehrer Report," and elsewhere.
His scholarly articles have appeared in
many edited books as well as in the Harvard Business
Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Policy, Journal of the
American Planning Association, North Carolina Law Review,
Housing Policy Debate, National Civic Review, Planning,
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Real
Estate Finance Journal, Journal of Urban Affairs, Cityscape,
Columbia Journalism Review, Social Problems, Housing
Studies, and other professional journals.
Dreier writes frequently for the Los
Angeles Times, the Nation, and American Prospect.
. His articles have also been published in the New York
Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsday, Chicago
Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, New Republic, Washington
Monthly, Progressive, National Catholic Reporter, Tikkun,
The Forward, Commonweal, Chronicle of Higher Education,
and elsewhere.
Dreier is actively engaged in civic and
political efforts at both the national and local levels. He
currently serves as co-chair of the Housing Innovations
Roundtable, sponsored by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa's office, to identify "best practices" in
housing policy and programs that can be adopted by LA. He
served on the executive committee of Housing LA, a broad
coalition of labor, community, and faith-based groups that
in 2001 successfully persuaded Mayor James Hahn and the LA
City Council to enact a $100 million annual Housing Trust
Fund to help address the city's severe housing shortage. It
is currently working to enact an Inclusionary Zoning
ordinance in Los Angeles.
He has been a member of two Los Angeles
City Council task forces -- on economic development and on
affordable housing. He is a member of the United Way of Los
Angeles' Community Reinvestment Task Force. .He
currently serves on the boards of the Pasadena Education
Foundation, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the
National Housing Institute, the Southern California
Association for Nonprofit Housing, and the Horizon
Institute. He is a founder of Invest in Kids, an advocacy
group for parents, teachers, and community residents working
to improve the Pasadena Unified School District.
He has served on the Pasadena School Choice
Commission (appointed by the superintendent to increase
participation of parents in school affairs) and on the
Pasadena Charter Reform Commission. He has served on
the advisory boards of the Liberty Hill Foundation, United
for a Fair Economy, Campaign for America's Future, Boston
Foundation, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy,
Neighborhood Housing Services, and other groups.
He is a founder and co-chair of the
Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN), a foundation-funded
project to link policy experts with grassroots organizations
to develop a broad policy agenda for the Los Angeles region.
He has served on the editorial boards of
Urban Affairs Quarterly, Housing Studies, and
Shelterforce. He also served as chair of the Advisory
Committee of the Spivack Program in Applied Social Research
and Policy of the American Sociological Association (ASA),
as a member of the ASA Program Committee for its 2007
meeting, as a member of the ASA's Committee on Public
Sociology, as a member of the elected Council of the ASA's
Community and Urban Sociology Section, and as a member of
the Best Book Award committees for the American Political
Science Association's Urban Politics Section and the ASA's
Community and Urban Sociology section.
He has worked closely with a wide range of
community organizations, labor unions, and public interest
organizations, and has worked as a consultant for a variety
of foundations and government agencies, including the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), VISTA,
the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, the MacArthur Foundation, the Boston
Foundation, the California AFL-CIO, the Los Angeles County
Federation of Labor, ACORN, the Industrial Areas Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, and others. In Boston he served
on the boards of Neighborhood Housing Services, Urban Edge
CDC, Health Care for the Homeless Project, and other
organizations. In the early l980s, he was a founder of the
Massachusetts Tenants Organization. While working in city
government, he was named "Hero of the Week" by the Boston
Phoenix for his efforts to fight redlining (bank
discrimination) in Boston's neighborhoods.
Other honors include the Public Service Award
from the University of Chicago Alumni Association (2002),
the Will and Nan Clarkson Visiting Chair in Urban and
Regional Planning at the SUNY-Buffalo School of Architecture
and Planning (2005), and the Benjamin and Louise Carroll
Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science at
the University of Oregon (2001). In 1980-81, while teaching
at Tufts, he was awarded a Public Service Fellowship by the
National Science Foundation to work with community and
consumer organizations in Boston.
In l987, while serving in city government, Dreier
drafted the Community Housing Partnership Act, legislation
sponsored by Congressman Joseph Kennedy and Senator Frank
Lautenberg, which became part of HUD's HOME program, created
under the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990. This
legislation provides federal funds to community-based
non-profit housing development organizations.
In 1993, the Clinton administration appointed
Professor Dreier to the Advisory Board of the Resolution
Trust Corporation (RTC), the Savings-and-Loan clean-up
agency.
Professor Dreier is married to Terry
Meng, a nurse practitioner, and lives in Pasadena. They have
twin daughters, Amelia Marsh Dreier and Sarah Michaela
Dreier, born December 17, 1996.
Curriculum Vitae
Courses
Fall 2007
Pols 101 - American Politics and Public
Policy (syllabus)
UEPI 310 - Community Organization and Leadership
UEPI 311 - Community Internship
Spring 2008
Pols 260 - Work and Labor in American
UEPI 301 - Urban Policy and Politics
