PHRC Events
Hankin Lecture to focus on America’s future homebuilding
Date: 10/11/2018
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Carlos Martín, Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where he leads research on the physical quality of housing and communities, will deliver the 2018 Hankin Distinguished lecture at 4 p.m. on Nov. 7 at the HUB-Robeson Center in the Freeman Auditorium.
The event is free and open to the public. An informal reception will follow. His lecture, titled, “The Global Trends Shaping America’s Future Homebuilding,” will focus on supply-side challenges that have seen particular turmoil in the past year, including labor markets and skills; material prices and availability; technological innovation; building and business regulations; and industry composition and firm capacity.
In his talk, Martín will discuss how the demand for housing in the United States remains strong — and in some cases, the lack of housing has reached crisis proportions. Numerous factors shape the industry’s inability to supply that housing. Some of these factors also have far-reaching consequences beyond the industry and, in turn, are shaped by much broader social and economic change. Just in 2017 alone, national policies and global commerce have shaped the pace of homebuilding and the qualities of the homes that the industry produces. Martín, a trained architect and construction engineer, connects the bricks and mortar of housing to its social outcomes. His areas of expertise include green housing, disaster mitigation, substandard housing and the construction workforce. He has experience with independent research and formal evaluations for public, nonprofit, and philanthropic clients. Publications include "Housing Recovery on the Gulf Coast, Phase II"; "Rebuild by Design Evaluation"; and "The State of the Residential Construction Industry." Martín is leading research on housing strategies for climate adaptation for the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program, strategies for promoting technological innovation in homebuilding for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the rate of housing recovery under HUD’s Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery. He also leads the multiyear global evaluation of the Rockefeller Foundation–pioneered 100 Resilient Cities. Before joining the Urban Institute, Martín was assistant staff vice president at the National Association of Home Builders for Construction Codes and Standards, SRP Professor for Energy and the Environment at Arizona State University's Del E. Webb School of Construction and School of Architecture, and coordinator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing. Martín received his bachelor of science in art and design degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his master's in engineering and doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University. Established in 2006 in honor of the late Bernard Hankin, the Hankin Distinguished Lecture Series brings world-class speakers to Penn State to address students, faculty, industry members and the general public with thought-provoking topics and education related to the housing industry. Read the full Penn State News article here.
