Ben Metcalf is the Managing Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley where he leads the expansion and deepening of Terner Center’s work addressing housing affordability challenges through rigorous research and policy analysis. In addition, he holds an appointment as adjunct professor with UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning. And he serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Terner Labs, a nonprofit organization formed to advance the applied innovation work of the Terner Center.
In 2015, Ben was appointed by former Governor Jerry Brown to lead California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), a role he held until 2019. During his tenure at the State, 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. His responsibilities included oversight of the Federal Housing Administration multifamily guaranteed loan portfolio and a subsidized affordable housing portfolio representing 30,000 multifamily properties across the U.S. Before that, he developed mixed-income and mixed-use communities with California-based BRIDGE Housing Corporation. As a senior project manager at BRIDGE, he sourced affordable housing opportunities and had day-to-day responsibility for a portfolio of major projects from initial due diligence and site acquisition through approvals, design and construction.He has a Masters in Public Policy and Urban Planning from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College.