Ben Metcalf

Ben Metcalf is an adjunct professor with the Department of City and Regional Planning. His area of focus is housing affordability where he looks at the impacts of constrained housing supply on economic mobility, equity and the environment.  In addition, he serves as Managing Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley where he leads both the expansion and deepening of Terner Center’s work solving housing affordability challenges through policy, practice and innovations.

Prior to joining the Terner Center, Ben was appointed in 2015 by former Governor Jerry Brown to lead California’s Department of Housing and Community Development, a role he held until 2019. Ben played an instrumental role in the passage and implementation of the 2017 Housing Package and oversaw the Department during a period of significant expansion of the state’s financial and regulatory reach into housing and land use matters.

Prior to joining HCD, Ben worked in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., including as an appointee of President Obama in the role of Deputy Assistant Secretary overseeing HUD’s Office of Multifamily Housing Programs. Before that, he developed mixed-income and mixed-use communities with California-based BRIDGE Housing Corporation.

Ben is also the Chief Executive Officer of Terner Housing Innovations Labs Inc, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering innovation in housing practice. And he is Principal and Founder of Stronger Foundations LLC, a housing policy and practice consulting firm.

CYPLAN 230 U.S. Housing, Planning, and Policy

​CYPLAN 238 Studio in Affordable Housing Development