Rachel Meltzer

Rachel Meltzer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Dr. Meltzer’s research is broadly concerned with urban economies and how market and policy forces can shape disparate outcomes across neighborhoods. She focuses on issues related to economic development, housing, land use, and local public finance.

Rachel’s current research explores how economic, institutional, and climate shocks impact retail and commercial activity and housing markets in urban neighborhoods. She is also interested in the private provision of public goods and has explored the impacts of business improvement districts and homeowners associations on housing markets and public services. In addition, she has conducted extensive research on the impact of inclusionary zoning on local housing markets and the political economy behind the adoption of such policies.

Prior to joining the Center, Rachel was the Plimpton Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and, before that, Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Chair of the Public and Urban Policy MS program at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment at The New School. She co-authored the textbook Policy Analysis as Problem Solving (Routledge 2018, 2025), and has taught classes on urban economics, quantitative methods, policy analysis, local economic development, and public finance. 

Rachel is a research affiliate at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. Rachel earned her doctorate in Public Policy and MPA from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University and a BA in Psychology and Mathematics from Dartmouth College.