Azurest Associates is a national consultancy that helps foundations, governments, and community-based organizations design, finance, and evaluate urban initiatives grounded in evidence and accountable to communities.
We measure urban policy by a single question — whether the people already there remain to benefit from the change. Everything we research, design, and evaluate begins there.
National think tanks produce excellent analysis from a distance. We pair that analytical depth with embedded, community-based practice — so the evidence we generate is usable, the strategy is implementable, and the evaluation tells you what actually changed on the ground.
We design with community-based organizations and residents as knowledge partners, not subjects. Three decades of participatory research means our recommendations are trusted by the people expected to live with them.
Our principals have led federally funded research and testified before Congress, and we bring that same standard — careful design, spatial analysis, mixed methods — to work at every scale, whether the client is a single neighborhood or a national agency.
Most firms hand off between strategy, financing, and evaluation. We carry an initiative from concept and feasibility through funding strategy and into rigorous evaluation — so nothing is lost in translation.
Engage us for a single study or a multi-year partnership. Each service stands alone and connects seamlessly to the next.
Original research that answers the question in front of you — needs assessments, market and feasibility studies, baseline and resident surveys, spatial and demographic analysis, and policy landscape reviews that withstand peer and public review.
Long-range strategic plans, equitable development frameworks, and governance and implementation roadmaps. We have authored citywide plans and the policy frameworks that municipal leaders adopt to guide housing trust funds, inclusionary zoning, and mixed-income development.
Grant strategy, proposal development, and capital and value-capture financing structures. Our principals have secured and stewarded significant federal and foundation funding across their careers, and advise clients on unlocking public investment for housing and infrastructure.
Independent, methodologically rigorous evaluation — process, outcome, and impact — including mixed-income and HOPE VI assessments, guaranteed-income studies, and disaster-mitigation reviews. We tell you what worked, for whom, and why.
Coalition building, deliberative public processes, and facilitation that brings residents, agencies, developers, and funders to the same table. We have led public participation reaching hundreds of residents, city councils, and mayors.
Trusted counsel for mayors, agency directors, and foundation program officers — executive briefings, expert testimony, and decision-ready analysis. Our principals have testified before the U.S. Congress and briefed leadership at the highest levels.
We concentrate where cities feel the most pressure — and where the right intervention changes lives.
Affordable and mixed-income housing, public-housing transformation, anti-displacement strategy, inclusionary zoning, shared-equity homeownership, and guaranteed-income approaches to housing stability.
Zoning and land-use reform, transit-oriented development, neighborhood revitalization, value-capture districts, and the property and ownership dynamics that shape who benefits from growth.
Disaster mitigation and floodplain policy, climate adaptation, environmental justice, and the human dimensions of environmental change in urban and peri-urban communities.
Racial and spatial equity analysis, community-based participatory research, neighborhood governance, and the design of programs that build power and opportunity where they have been withheld.
Our engagements move through five disciplined phases. Every deliverable is built to inform a decision and to be implemented by the people we hand it to.
We start on the ground — with residents, staff, and data — to define the real question, not the assumed one.
Mixed-methods research and analysis sized to the decision, the budget, and the standard of evidence required.
Strategy, policy, and financing options modeled for feasibility and tested against equity and implementation realities.
We stay through execution — building coalitions, briefing decision-makers, and translating plans into action.
Independent evaluation closes the loop, documenting impact and feeding the next cycle of improvement.
Between them, the principals have directed federally supported research, counseled mayors and agency leadership, and added to the body of scholarship their own field relies upon. Two have testified before the United States Congress.
We note it here, once, and let the work speak for the rest.
Our principals have been invited to testify, trusted to steer their disciplines' journals, and selected through competitive federal review. A few of the markers we're proud of.
Final policy report adopted across POAH Communities and presented to the Aspen Institute — a culmination of 15+ years of documented collaboration.
Selected through the U.S. Army's competitive xTechHBCU technology challenge for applied data-science research.
Led the flagship urban-sociology journal of the American Sociological Association; previously Managing Editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
Curated HUD's Cityscape special issue on the policy assumptions and lived realities of mixed-income housing.
"Legislative Proposals to Preserve Public Housing," before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity — one of two occasions principals have testified before Congress.
FEMA-funded floodplain-buyout research informing rule-making under the National Flood Insurance Reform Act.
Azurest is led by four principals with complementary strengths across research, financing, evaluation, and quantitative method, working from offices in Richmond–Petersburg, Atlanta, and Denver — supported by a bench of affiliated associates across disciplines.
An urban sociologist who has spent his career translating evidence into equitable city policy. Has led NSF, HUD, and FEMA research, testified before the U.S. Congress on public housing, and authored the equitable-development framework adopted by the City of Nashville.
Full Professor of Computer Information Systems at Virginia State University, with nearly two decades integrating econometric modeling, data analytics, and generative AI for public-interest decision-making. Leads causal-inference design — difference-in-differences and synthetic control — and builds evidence-grounded spatial decision-support tools. Holds a VTRC/VDOT-funded transportation-analytics record and mentors the Data Science for the Public Good program.
Professor of Sociology at Georgia State University and affiliated faculty at its Urban Studies Institute. A nationally recognized authority on public-housing transformation and neighborhood change, she testified before Congress and served as Editor-in-Chief of City & Community.
A Project Director with a 20-year consulting career across the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Advises governments, developers, and nonprofits on feasibility, financial structuring, value capture and incentive reform, and the funding strategies that unlock public investment in housing and infrastructure.
Behind the principals sits a network of affiliated associates we convene to match each engagement — so clients get a team built for the problem, not a fixed roster billing for hours.
Studies, strategies, and evaluations our principals have led for federal, state, philanthropic, and community clients, grouped into the five themes where we do our deepest work. Select a theme to open it.
How mixed-income neighborhoods can be made to work for low-income households, grounded in resident surveys across a national portfolio.
Relocation outcomes, lived realities, and community-support components of public-housing redevelopment across multiple U.S. cities.
Interrupting place-based inequality through shared-equity homeownership models.
Crime, social networks, and neighborhood change in the wake of forced public-housing relocation.
A feasibility study and the equitable-development framework adopted by the Mayor's office to guide a housing trust fund and mixed-income development.
A two-metro design tracing investor, developer, government, and renter experience in well-performing Opportunity Zone tracts, using matched difference-in-differences estimation.
A practitioner's toolkit for designating, screening, and evaluating Opportunity Zone tracts for community benefit.
Decomposing who bears the cost and who captures the benefit of place-based tax incentives.
A multi-phase program of econometric and data-science modeling supporting state transportation planning and investment decisions.
Expanding equitable access to walking, biking, and active mobility in under-served communities.
Co-directed applied research on shared micro-mobility and its role in urban transportation systems.
Place attachment and the decision-making behind floodplain buyout programs — informing rule-making under the National Flood Insurance Reform Act.
Seed research advancing rural engagement and outreach methods for agricultural communities.
An evidence-grounded spatial decision-support tool that draws only on validated results from completed core analysis to guide practitioners and policymakers.
Faculty-mentored applied analytics training the next generation of public-interest data scientists.
Independent analysis of the state policy landscape to inform advocacy and program design.
The agencies, philanthropies, and institutions that have commissioned and funded our principals' work.
Whether you need a single study or a multi-year partner, we'll respond within two business days with how we'd approach it — and an honest read on whether we're the right team.