Geoff Smith, former senior vice president of the Woodstock Institute, has been named executive director of DePaul University’s Institute for Housing Studies (IHS).

“We are thrilled that someone with the depth of expertise and the breadth of experience of Geoff Smith will be serving as executive director,” said Susanne Ethridge Cannon, chair of DePaul’s Department of Real Estate and Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Director of The Real Estate Center. “His leadership will further enhance the institute’s prominence, both locally and nationally.”

The IHS is a multidisciplinary academic and applied research center that provides data and analysis to inform housing-related policy and resource allocation decisions. The Real Estate Center created the IHS in 2007 with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through the Preservation Compact.

Smith, 36, will direct the institute’s research and data collection efforts that focus primarily on supporting practitioners such as city planners, financial institutions, developers and community-based organizations working to preserve and increase access to affordable rental housing in Cook County.

“IHS will work closely with these practitioners to ensure that our research will positively impact their work on the ground,” Smith said. “We will also continue to build on IHS’ one-of-a-kind data clearinghouse that brings together a wide range of public and private housing data.” The data have been used to produce reports on rental rates, foreclosures, real estate prices and other trends in the Chicago multifamily housing market.

At the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit research and policy organization focusing on the areas of fair lending, wealth creation and financial systems reform, Smith led the institute’s research that examined the economic health of neighborhood housing markets and factors that threatened the financial security of economically vulnerable communities.

He authored and co-authored numerous Woodstock publications and co-authored research published in journals, including Housing Policy Debate and Urban Affairs Review, and testified on predatory lending issues and community reinvestment policy at hearings held by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, the Federal Reserve Board, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation and the Chicago City Council. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and he has appeared on “NBC Nightly News.”

Smith received a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Editor’s note: Smith can discuss the following topics: housing, community development and mortgage lending.