Graduate School
MIT

Undergraduate School
Carleton College

Mentor
Brian Doherty, Building and Construction Trades Council of the Metropolitan District and Rappaport Institute Advisory Board Member

Agency
Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development

Supervisor
Cate Mingoya, Director of Policy and Program Development Development

Description of Fellowship
Reed’s fellowship with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) where he worked on three projects for the agency. In the first project, Reed assessed how DHCD can monitor and support the operations and management of the state funded affordable housing program. Through site visits to local public housing agencies, analysis of administrative data covering 250 agencies, and interviews with public housing staff, Reed developed a set of recommendations on how DHCD can prioritize and direct its resources to support the preservation and long-term sustainability of public housing through the Commonwealth. For the second project, Reed helped design a new DHCD program that uses a lease-purchase contract (“lease-to-own”) to support homeownership for households with low income. He interviewed local and national lease-purchase providers to learn best practices for a tenant friendly program model that would support households who wish to transition into homeownership. For the third project, Reed researched mechanisms and opportunities for DHCD to support communities in the Commonwealth that have identified high rates of vacant and abandoned properties as a major housing issue.