About

Vicki L. Been is the Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, an Affiliated Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and faculty director of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. She has been on the faculty at NYU since 1990, focusing her scholarship on the intersection of land use, urban policy, and housing. Under her leadership, the Furman Center has become the nation’s leading academic research center dedicated to the public policy aspects of land use, real estate, and housing development, and was awarded the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2012. Been returned to NYU in January 2022 after serving as deputy mayor for housing and economic development of the City of New York from May 2019 to December 2021, where she led multiple agencies and offices, overseeing the financing of the construction and preservation of 200,000 homes, implementing comprehensive rezonings to address affordable housing shortages, revamping leadership at the public housing authority, and designing a pandemic research institute. She previously served as Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development for New York City from 2014 to 2017. Her research areas include affordable housing, exactions, land use, predatory lending, smart growth, and takings. Her work explores the regulation of land development, environmental justice, and the federal role in urban development, contributing significantly to the understanding of land use policies and urban planning.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Natural resource economics
• Public economics

Selected publications

• Land use reform and property rights: the need for caution

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-07-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Professor Vicki Been explores how legislators have utilized property rights arguments to justify land use reforms. These laws have been triggered in part by the fears of homeowners who face devaluation of their properties, and by the need to balance the rights of landowners seeking development against the interests of existing homeowners. She looks to states that have been incubators for land use reform when they remove overly restrictive regulations. However, pre-existing homeowners who obtained ownership under restrictive private covenants have challenged the shift in land use reform as they face new developments interfering with their property. The legal arguments available to pre-existing homeowners to protect their constitutional property rights become critical impediments to change. Been speculates about whether one can succeed in fighting land use reform when the reform is grounded in sound public policy.

  PublisherDOI

• Are Zoning District Borders Color Lines? How Lot Size Requirements Alter Neighborhood Racial Composition 

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Supply Skepticism Revisited

  Housing Policy Debate · 2024 · 16 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Business
  • Public economics

  Although “supply skeptics” claim that new housing supply does not slow growth in rents, our review of rigorous recent studies finds that: (a) increases in housing supply reduce rents or slow the growth in rents in the region; (b) in some circumstances, new construction also reduces rents or rent growth in the surrounding neighborhood; (c) while new supply is associated with measures of gentrification, it has not been shown to heighten displacement of lower income households; and (d) the chains of moves resulting from new supply free up both for-sale and rented dwelling units that are then occupied by households across the income spectrum, and provide higher income households with alternatives to the older units for which they might otherwise outbid lower income residents.

  PublisherDOI

• Response to Comments on “Supply Skepticism Revisited”

  Housing Policy Debate · 2024-11-11

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Effects of Housing Price Declines on Children's Educational Outcomes

  Education Finance and Policy · 2024-05-15

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We examine the effects that household exposure to housing price declines, captured by measures of negative equity, have on children's academic performance, using data on public school students and housing transactions from the State of Florida. Our empirical strategy exploits variation over time in the timing of family moves to account for household sorting into neighborhoods and schools and selection into initial mortgage terms. In contrast to the existing literature on the effects of foreclosure, we find that students with the highest risk of negative equity exhibit significantly higher test score growth, with the largest effects among Black students and students qualifying for free or reduced-priced lunch. We find evidence supporting two underlying mechanisms: (1) families in negative equity may reduce the impact of income losses on consumption by forgoing mortgage payments, and (2) families exposed to high levels of negative equity may move to schools that received higher average school report card grades. While negative equity and foreclosure are undesirable, negative equity may have encouraged homeowners to forgo mortgage payments to mitigate the impact of the Great Recession, and temporarily reduced the housing market barriers low-income households faced in accessing educational opportunities.

  PublisherDOI

• Supply Skepticism Revisited

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• The laws effects on public participation

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-12-11 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Law governs public participation in planning and zoning. This chapter identifies various research questions that would add to our understanding of how the law of public participation affects land use decision-making. This chapter will first describe the types of legal requirements that govern public participation in land use and zoning processes. Next, it will consider how current public participation law affects land use and zoning decisions. It will then use attempts to make public participation work in the COVID era to understand the ways that existing laws can encourage or constrain reform efforts. Finally, the chapter concludes by considering, more broadly, efforts to reform public participation laws. Throughout, the chapter raises various research questions that relate to the operation of current law and efforts to reform those laws.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Negative Equity on Children's Educational Outcomes. Working Paper 28428.

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Gentrification, Displacement, and Fair Housing:

  Temple University Press eBooks · 2021-03-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Negative Equity on Children’s Educational Outcomes

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-02-01 · 5 citations

  report1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines the effects of negative equity on children's academic performance, using data on children attending Florida public schools and housing transactions from the State of Florida.Our empirical strategy exploits variation over time in the timing of family moves to Florida in order to account for household sorting into neighborhoods and schools and selection into initial mortgage terms.In contrast to the existing literature on foreclosure and children's outcomes, we find that Florida students with the highest risk of negative equity exhibit significantly higher test score growth.These effects are largest among Black students and students who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch.We find evidence supporting two underlying mechanisms: (1) consumption patterns suggest that families in negative equity may reduce the impact of income losses on consumption by forgoing mortgage payments, and (2) mobility patterns suggest that families exposed to high levels of negative equity may move to schools that are of higher quality on average.While negative equity and foreclosure are undesirable, the changing incentives in terms of mortgage delinquency may have helped families manage the economic shocks caused by the great recession, as well as temporarily reduced the housing market barriers faced by low income households when attempting to access educational opportunities.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ingrid Gould Ellen

  New York University

  61 shared

• Michael Gedal

  New York University

  22 shared

• Sewin Chan

  19 shared

• Josiah Madar

  15 shared

• Ioan Voicu

  14 shared

• Leanna Stiefel

  New York University

  11 shared

• Jenny Schuetz

  Brookings Institution

  11 shared

• Edward L. Glaeser

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  11 shared

Education

• B.A., City and Regional Planning

  University of California, Berkeley

  1983

• M.A., City and Regional Planning

  University of California, Berkeley

  1985

• Ph.D., City and Regional Planning

  University of California, Berkeley

  1989

Awards & honors

• MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions (201…