Penny Gurstein

BArch '76, Professor and Former Director, SCARP

Dr. Penny Gurstein is Professor and former Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Centre for Human Settlements (CHS) at UBC.  At UBC since 1991, and Director of SCARP from 2007-2018, she has been effective in providing leadership in community-university partnerships with public, private and non-profit sectors, and in bringing the resources and capacities of the university to bear on addressing critical planning issues in Metro Vancouver. Her research interests focus on helping people who have been marginalized in planning processes. She has led a number of large research projects investigating housing affordability, and inequality and access issues for low-income people.  She has also worked on capacity building projects internationally on gender and youth development and has considerable experience working with community groups in the greater Vancouver region.  Besides her academic articles and books, she has written and been interviewed extensively in the popular press on critical community planning and housing issues.  She is founding Director of the Housing Research Collaborative, a community of housing researchers, providers and policy makers focused on understanding systemic impediments in the housing system and the development of models to address housing unaffordability, Co-Chair of the Pacific Housing Research Network, and is a registered planner and member of the Canadian Institute of Planners. She is the 2016 recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Education, Training and Development.  Dr. Gurstein has been appointed to the Board of Commissioners of BC Housing Management Commission from 2018 to 2021.