Eric Seymour, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Eric Seymour is an Assistant Professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. He holds a PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Michigan and was most recently a postdoctoral research associate at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. Eric’s research is broadly concerned with neighborhood dynamics in the aftermath of the financial crisis and their implications for the health and housing insecurity of disadvantaged populations. He continues to be engaged in research on transformations in urban housing markets in places hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, where investors purchased large numbers of repossessed properties and sold them on insecure terms or rented them in uninhabitable condition to low-income and credit-constrained households. Eric’s prior work has specifically examined the reemergence of exploitative contract-for-deed transactions in majority-Black cities and neighborhoods. He is currently engaged in research on evictions in Detroit and Las Vegas, focusing on the intersection of opportunistic property investment and the constrained housing options of low-income renters. His methodological expertise lies in spatial analysis and statistical methods. He draws on large administrative datasets, particularly real estate transaction records, to study urban dynamics.