Former Director; Professor, City and Regional Planning
Biography
Roberto G. Quercia is the Harris Distinguished Professor in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning. Professor Quercia leads major research projects in the areas of low-income homeownership, mortgage lending, subprime and predatory lending, and financial services issues. He is a co-author of Regaining the Dream: How to Renew the Promise of Homeownership for America’s Working Families (with Allison Freeman and Janneke Ratcliffe), published by Brooking University Press in 2011, and of A Place Called Home: The Social Dimensions of Homeownership (with Kim Manturuk and Mark Lindblad), published by Oxford University Press in 2017.
Professor Quercia has conducted extensive research for government agencies, municipalities, community organizations and private entities, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. He has published on the topics of low-income homeownership, affordable lending and the assessment of lending risks, and homeownership education and counseling.
He has held appointments at the University of Texas, the University of California at Berkeley, the Wharton Real Estate Center (University of Pennsylvania), and the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Professor Quercia holds a masters degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.