I’m an urban planner and participatory action researcher studying housing inequality and neighborhood change.  I work with intergenerational coalitions of resident leaders and affordable housing providers to understand how racialized disinvestment shapes displacement and develop strategies to reverse its effects.  Together, we ground community development in collective memory, surfacing obscured histories and resident visions as guides to more just planning. Our research results in a range of public initiatives: digital humanities tools, plans for scaling emerging community land trusts, co-curated neighborhood exhibits, transferring land bank properties to affordable housing providers, the restoration of a historic home into a cultural center, and a memorial to enslaved laborers in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.  This work has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Monument Lab Re:Generation, and MIT initiatives including the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, Community Innovators Lab, and Racially Just Research Initiative.  

I received my PhD in Urban Planning and Policy from MIT in 2026.  I'm currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia before joining  the University of Illinois Chicago as an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Policy. Prior to my PhD,  I was the Director of Emergency Rent and Housing Policy for the Works Community Development Corporation. I led eviction prevention for the $90 million Memphis/Shelby County Emergency Rental Assistance program, and co-created court data workflows and processes that connected 12,000 tenants to limited legal representation. Our work was profiled by NPR and deemed  "one of the strongest eviction diversion programs in the country" by the U.S. Department of Treasury.   I received my master's in planning with distinction from Harvard GSD,  where I was a Gramlich Fellow in Community and Economic Development at the Joint Center for Housing Studies, and my B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia. You can reach me at mhaltom@mit.edu.