Peter Dreier is the Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He joined the Occidental faculty in January 1993 after serving for nine years as Director of Housing at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from Syracuse University. The University of Chicago Alumni Association selected Dreier for its annual Public Service Award for 2002.

For more than two decades he has been involved in urban policy as a scholar, a government official, a journalist, and an activist for reform. Professor Dreier has written widely on American politics and public policy, specializing in urban politics and policy, housing policy, and community development. He is a frequent speaker on this topics to a wide variety of professional, scholarly, and civic organizations.

His most recent book, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century (coauthored with John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom and published by the University Press of Kansas in 2001), analyzes the roots of the urban crisis, emphasizing the combination of federal policy and market forces in exacerbating economic and racial segregation, and political fragmentation, in our metropolitan areas. The book outlines a policy agenda and political strategy to build bridges between cities and suburbs. Place Matters won the 2001 Michael Harrington Book Award, given by the American Political Science Association for the “outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.”

His previous book, Regions That Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together (coauthored with Manuel Pastor, Eugene Grigsby, and Marta Lopez-Garza and published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2000) examined the disconnect between regional economic development strategies and community development practices in low-income neighborhoods.
He recently completed two books (with different coauthors) about Los Angeles and Southern California that will be published in 2004. The Next Los Angeles: A Century of Struggle for a Livable City (with Regina Freer, Bob Gottlieb, and Mark Vallianatos) will be published by University of California Press. Up Against the Sprawl: Public Policy and the Re-Making of Southern California (coedited with Jennifer Wolch and Manuel Pastor) will be published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Along with economists Richard Green and Andrew Reschovsky of the University of Wisconsin, he recently completed work on a $655,000 grant from the Ford Foundation focusing on expanding homeownership opportunities. They are coordinating a team of 12 researchers to examine the impact of federal tax policy on homeownership and the housing industry and to recommend new ways to design tax policy to increase the homeownership rate, particularly among low-income households.

He is also writing a report for the Century Foundation that will evaluate current federal housing programs and recommend a variety of reforms to strengthen housing policy's effectiveness and political constituency.

In addition to the Ford Foundation and Century Foundation, Dreier’s research has been funded by the Haynes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, and other funders.

He is frequently quoted as an expert on housing and urban issues, most recently in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, San Diego Union Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on KCRW's "Which Way LA," PBS TV's "McNeil Lehrer Report," and elsewhere.

Dreier writes frequently for the Los Angeles Times, American Prospect, and The Nation magazine.

His scholarly articles have appeared in many edited books as well as in the Harvard Business Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Policy, Journal of the American Planning Association, North Carolina Law Review, Challenge, Housing Policy Debate, National Civic Review, Planning, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Real Estate Finance Journal, Journal of Urban Affairs, Cityscape, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Journalism Review, Social Problems, Housing Studies, Journal of Housing, Canadian Housing, Media and Society, and other professional journals.

He has also written frequently for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive, Dissent, Commonweal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Foundation News, and elsewhere.

Dreier is actively engaged in civic and political efforts at both the national and local levels. He has been a member of two Los Angeles City Council task forces on economic development and on affordable housing. He serves on the executive committee of Housing LA, a broad coalition of labor, community, and faith-based groups that recently persuaded Mayor James Hahn and the Los Angeles City Council to enact a $100 million annual Housing Trust Fund to help address the city's severe housing shortage. He is a founder and co-chair (with Professor Bob Gottlieb) of the Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN), a foundation-funded project to link policy experts with grassroots organizations to develop a broad policy agenda for the Los Angeles region.

He is currently a member of the United Way of Los Angeles' Community Reinvestment Task Force and of the Council of Economic Advisors of the California Workforce Investment Board, the state agency that oversees job training programs. He has served on the boards of directors or on the advisory boards of the National Housing Institute, the Southern California Association for Non-Profit Housing, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, United for a Fair Economy, Campaign for America’s Future, Boston Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, Neighborhood Housing Services, and other groups. He has served on the editorial boards of Urban Affairs Quarterly, Housing Studies, and Shelterforce. He also served as chair of the Advisory Committee of the Spivack Program in Applied Social Research and Policy of the American Sociological Association and as a member of the elected Council of the American Sociological Association’s Community and Urban Sociology Section.

He has worked closely with a wide range of community organizations, labor unions, and public interest organizations, and has worked as a consultant for a variety of foundations and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), VISTA, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the MacArthur Foundation, the Boston Foundation, the California AFL-CIO, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, ACORN, the Industrial Areas Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, and others. In Boston he served on the boards of Neighborhood Housing Services, Urban Edge CDC, Health Care for the Homeless Project, and other organizations. In the early l980s, he was a founder of the Massachusetts Tenants Organization. While working in city government, he was named "Hero of the Week" by the Boston Phoenix for his efforts to fight redlining (bank discrimination) in Boston's neighborhoods.

In l987, while serving in city government, Dreier drafted the Community Housing Partnership Act, legislation sponsored by Congressman Joseph Kennedy and Senator Frank Lautenberg, which became part of HUD's HOME program, created under the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990. This legislation provides federal funds to community based non-profit housing development organizations.

In 1993, the Clinton administration appointed Professor Dreier to the Advisory Board of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the Savings and Loan clean-up agency.

Prior to working for Mayor Flynn he taught at Tufts University. During the Spring semester of 2001, he was the Benjamin and Louise Carroll Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Oregon.