Building self-sufficiency among low-income tenants: a conversation with guest Esther Shin

A conversation on the frontier of housing-based community development with a data and results-informed approach with guest Esther Shin, President of Urban Strategies, facilitated by Eric Iglesias, MSRED ‘21 Research Assistant at the GSAPP Housing Lab. 

This event was part of a series organized by the student team at GSAPP’s Housing Lab of informal interdisciplinary conversations on the frontiers of anti-racist practice in housing. Each session focused on a specific theme, often with a guest expert practitioner or researcher on hand as a co-facilitator along with members of the Housing Lab student team. The series was part of the Housing Lab’s project to explicitly integrate an anti-racist agenda into its current engagements and methods of working.

Esther Shin, President of Urban Strategies, Inc., a not-for-profit organization with over 40 years of community planning and development experience, discussed how USI leverages public private partnerships and cross sector collaboration to plan and implement a data-driven, results informed framework to enable low-income households achieve self-sufficiency.

Born and raised in South Louisiana, Eric Iglesias is a Master of Science in Real Estate Development (MSRED) student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with research interests in community and economic development. Prior to his graduate studies at GSAPP, Eric worked for a national for-profit affordable housing developer managing mixed-use, mixed-income, neighborhood revitalization projects throughout the U.S. He also worked for a national nonprofit leader in community planning, managing federally funded human capital plans designed to narrow the inequality gap and advance social equity. Eric holds a master’s degree in historic preservation from Tulane University and a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from the University of New Orleans. Since August 2020, Eric has been working as a research assistant for GSAPP’s Housing Lab.