From Havana to HUD

Kennedy School Assistant Professor Xavier de Souza Briggs, who took a group of 17 graduate public policy students on a one-week study tour of Cuba last year, has now embarked on another adventure of sorts.

He has been appointed deputy assistant secretary in policy development and research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington D.C., and will oversee the yearly allocation of $20 million for urban policy research and policy.

In November, Briggs received the Association for Public Policy and Management’s 1997 award for best dissertation in policy research in any field for his dissertation on “Brown Kids in White Suburbs: Housing Mobility, Neighborhood Effects and the Social Ties of Poor Youth.”

Briggs is co-author of a book on the social effects of community development, From Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community Development, a study of the impact of nonprofit community development corporations on residents’ lives.

He has worked in urban projects in Brazil and Central America. After taking the student group to Cuba last year (DRCLAS NEWS, Spring 1997), he was instrumental in designing a website with a photoessay to share with viewers a sense of the changes taking place in that Caribbean country.