Warren Lowell

Warren Lowell is a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in the joint-degree program in Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University. He researches how housing insecurity, gentrification, and homelessness are related to broader processes of racial inequality in the United States. His dissertation is on the recent growth of real estate investing in historic, Black neighborhoods in North Carolinian cities. In this project, he combines qualitative interviews with investors and residents with geospatial and statistical analysis of real estate transactions to tell the story of how investors have come to own an increasing share of property in Black neighborhoods and what the growing presence of investors in local housing markets means for the future of these neighborhoods and their original residents.