Kasey Zapatka, PhD

I am a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. I hold a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York, The Graduate Center.

My research examines urban inequality through the lens of housing, neighborhoods, and socioeconomic stratification. I have published studies on the sequence of gentrification, the benefits of New York City’s rent regulation for stabilized tenants, and patterns of neighborhood diversification in immigrant cities.

Current projects include evaluating the impact of Emergency Rental Assistance distributed during the COVID-19 Pandemic on eviction filing rates using multilevel and machine learning techniques; assessing the effects of eviction moratoria with augmented synthetic controls; and applying spatial econometric techniques to identify spillover effects of gentrification on neighborhood affordability.

Methodologically, I specialize in quantitative approaches to spatial, survey, and cross-sectional data and teach a year-long course in computational social science to PhD students at UC Berkeley, which covers machine learning, natural language processing, and causal inference techniques.

I am also committed to public-facing scholarship. I developed Housing Literacy, a web-based tool to explain New York City’s rent regulation laws, and the Superdiveristy Website and Teaching Tool, which visualizes the changing diversity of metropolitan New York.