Yana Kucheva is a sociologist and demographer who studies U.S. housing policy, the social safety net, and environmental and climate justice. She has published widely on the relationship between residential segregation, geographic mobility, and U.S. fair housing policy, with a particular focus on HUD assisted housing programs and anti-discrimination policies. Her co-authored book Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing, provides the most definitive historical account from the 1880s to the present of how fair housing laws were shaped and implemented and how public policy can be used to achieve broad housing integration within a generation. Her current research combines the study of housing with immigrant, environmental, and climate justice.
Recent projects in this context include a study of mixed-status families and the U.S. social safety net during the COVID-19 pandemic, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, and a study of indoor air pollution in NYC, funded by the National Science Foundation. She is also the Principal Investigator of a large interdisciplinary project, funded by the CCNY Collegewide Research Vision (CRV) Initiative, which employs expertise across sociology, architecture, engineering, and computer science, to co-create scalable climate solutions with community partners in the areas of housing, energy, and environmental justice.
Education
- Ph.D., Sociology, University of California – Los Angeles, 2012
- A.B. (with Honors, magna cum laude), Urban Studies and Economics, Brown University, 2004
Courses
- Methods and Techniques of Sociological Research
- Poverty and Inequality
- Housing and Community Development
- Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice
Journal publications
- Kucheva, Yana and Ronak Etemadpour. 2024. “Gas leaks, gas shutoffs, and environmental justice in New York City.” Urban Affairs Review.
Kucheva, Yana. 2022. “What would it take to desegregate U.S. metropolitan areas? Pathways to residential desegregation by race.” Demography 59(2): 433-459. - Baghestani, Amirhossein, Tayarani, Mohammad, Allaviranloo, Mahdieh, Nadafianshahamabadi, Razieh, Kucheva, Yana, Mamdoohi, Amirreza, and Oliver Gao. 2022. “New York City Cordon Pricing and Its Impacts on Transit Accessibility, Air Quality, and Health.” Case Studies on Transport Policy 10(1): 485-499.
- Kucheva, Yana. 2021. “Residential Mobility and Hispanic Segregation: Spatial Assimilation and the Concentration of Poverty, 1960-2014.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research 23(2): 207-244.
- Kucheva, Yana. 2018. “Subsidized Housing and the Transition to Adulthood.” Demography 55(2): 617-642.
- Kucheva, Yana and Richard Sander. 2018.“Structural versus Ethnic Dimensions of Housing Segregation.” Journal of Urban Affairs 40(3): 329-348.
- Honorable Mention, Best Article in the Journal of Urban Affairs Award, 2019
- Kucheva, Yana. 2014. “The Receipt of Subsidized Housing across Generations.” Population Research and Policy Review 33: 841-871.
- Kucheva, Yana and Richard Sander. 2014. “The Misunderstood Consequences of Shelley v. Kraemer.” Social Science Research 48: 212-233.
- Kucheva, Yana. 2013. “Subsidized Housing and the Concentration of Poverty, 1977-2008: An Examination of Eight U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” City and Community 12(2): 113-133.
Book
- Sander, Richard, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff. 2018. Moving toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing. Harvard University Press.
