The Association of Public Policy and Management (APPAM) announced that Vincent Reina of the USC Price School of Public Policy has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Policy and Management.
The dissertation award will be presented to Reina during an award luncheon on Nov. 4, as part of APPAM’s 2016 Fall Research Conference in Washington, D.C. Reina is the first from USC Price to receive this prestigious honor.
Reina’s dissertation – titled “The Impact of Mobility and Government Subsidies on Household Welfare and Rents” – examines the behavior of landlords who provide affordable housing and the formation of policies to ensure the availability of affordable housing for low income households.
Reina’s research interests are primarily in housing and urban development, springing from professional experience interning for AmeriCorps at the “I Have a Dream” Foundation; working at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation; and serving as a research fellow at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. He is now an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
In his nomination of Reina, USC Price Professor Gary Painter noted how the “dissertation is a terrific example of his scholarship. His work has already been published, and he has been a sought-after contributor to those that study or work in the field of low-income housing.”
Painter and Professor Raphael Bostic served as Reina’s dissertation committee chairs.
Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Reina received his B.S. in urban studies from Cornell University, MSc in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford, and MBA with a concentration in economics and real estate from NYU.
“This year the committee read a large number of excellent nominated dissertations. Dr. Reina’s dissertation is exceptionally creative and original, extremely well-executed, and highly policy-relevant,” stated APPAM Dissertation Award Committee Chair Lucie Schmidt. “His findings have the potential to inform the critical policy debates about affordable housing for low income families and the effects of residential mobility.”