Alejandra Reyes is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology. Her research centers on questions of governance around housing policy, finance, production, and access – and highlights the critical influence of political and economic factors on housing and urban development.

Previously, she was the 2018-2019 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She received her B.A. in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin.

Housing Policy & Urban Governance

Reyes carries out research on questions of governance and the influence of public, private and civic sectors in decision-making around housing policy, finance, and production. Drawing upon mixed methods and extensive field research, she has highlighted the tensions between the financialization of housing policies and production, and the ability of households to access adequate housing. Much of her work has highlighted the implications of financialization processes in Mexico – surmounting mortgage and household debt, the clustering of vacant and abandoned housing, inadequate access to infrastructure, services and economic opportunities, and ultimately, the reproduction of poor housing conditions. Since public resources and institutions have mitigated the financial risks for the construction and financial sectors, Reyes describes the interplay between government and private actors as a multi-level system of governance which has reproduced and intensified socioeconomic and political inequities. She has also juxtaposed Mexico’s and Brazil’s housing finance and development models against incipient civic efforts pushing back against their implications in pursuit of policy changes and better living conditions. The different ways in which countries have managed, promoted, or restricted housing financialization, underscore the influence of political actors and regimes in addressing the tensions between economic pressures and social concerns, as well as the fluctuating and unstable nature of housing finance and its contingency on the different political and ideological inclinations of governments – and their constituents.

Reyes is also pursuing parallel research queries in Orange County, California. While California was the first state to mandate all jurisdictions to plan for the housing needs of all residents, land costs, political lobbying, fragmented governance, and null enforcement continued to promote uneven housing development patterns, perpetuating economic and ethno-racial disparities and segregation. Within Southern California, housing allocations and growth have been pushed to the east of the Los Angeles region and lower-income jurisdictions, exempting coastal and wealthier jurisdictions from accommodating their fair share of growth. Yet, the passage of recent housing bills has ramped up the pressure on local compliance, presenting an opportunity to examine the evolution of municipal administrations in their support or resistance to housing provision, as well as the influence of different stakeholders in such processes.

OC is a prosperous but segregated suburban region with strong unaffordability pressures; southern and coastal cities are particularly exclusionary. Contentious housing politics make the county an interesting focus of analysis. Reyes aims to evaluate OC cities in their support of low-income housing, and gauge their reactions to recent bills and higher housing allocations. OC and many of its cities contested new allocations at the most notable rate in the region, even requesting increases in Santa Ana’s allocation, the densest, one of the lowest-income, and 76.8% Latinx city to the north of the county. While appeals were unsuccessful, the OC Council of Governments and the bulk of its cities sued the state over housing mandates shortly before the deadline to submit their revised Housing Elements in 2021. While the county built 193.7% of its closing allocation and 322.8% of its above moderate-income allocation, it underperforms in low-income housing production, with some cities permitting low-income development at notably low paces.

L. Alejandra Reyes R.C., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Urban Planning & Public Policy
lreyesru@uci.edu

(949) 824-9316