Vicki Been

Vicki Been
Vicki Been

Boxer Family Professor of Law  / NYU School of Law

Affiliated Professor of Public Policy  / NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy

Biography

Vicki Been is the Boxer Family Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, an Affiliated Professor of Public Policy of the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Faculty Director of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Prof. Been returned to NYU in February, 2017, after serving for three years as Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development for the City of New York. In that capacity, she led the 2400-person agency in: designing and implementing Housing New York, a comprehensive strategy for addressing the crisis in affordable housing the City faced; financing and supervising the preservation or new construction of 62,500 affordable homes in just three years; securing the passage of the nation’s most rigorous yet flexible mandatory inclusionary housing program; changing the way the agency approached neighborhood planning to be more comprehensive and community-driven; reforming the policies and procedures for the allocation of affordable housing financed by the agency to be fairer and more efficient; implementing an unprecedented program to develop the capacity of minority and women owned businesses to participate in the production and management of affordable housing; and streamlining many of the agency’s processes.

Professor Been, who has been on the faculty at NYU since 1990, focuses her scholarship on the intersection of land use, urban policy and housing. Been has done extensive research on New York City’s land use patterns, inclusionary zoning, historic preservation, the interplay of community benefit agreements with land use practices, and on a variety of affordable housing and land use policies, including gentrification, mortgage foreclosure, racial and economic integration. and the effects of supportive housing developments on their neighbors. Been also writes about environmental justice, the Fifth Amendment prohibition against the taking of property without just compensation, and international protections for property owners, She is the co-author of a leading land use casebook, Land Use Controls.

Been is a 1983 graduate of New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar. She clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld of the Southern District of New York and for Justice Harry Blackmun of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy is a joint center of the New York University School of Law and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU. Since its founding in 1995, the Furman Center has become the leading academic research center in New York City devoted to the public policy aspects of land use, real estate, and housing development. The Furman Center is dedicated to providing objective academic and empirical research on the legal and public policy issues involving land use, real estate, housing and urban affairs in the United States, with a particular focus on New York City. In February 2012, the Furman Center was named a recipient of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in recognition of its excellence in providing objective, policy-relevant research to address the challenges facing neighborhoods in New York City and across the nation. More information on the Furman Center can be found at: http://furmancenter.org.