Deirdre Pfeiffer

Deirdre Pfeiffer's scholarship, teaching, and community engagement focuses on housing strategies to advance social equity, the relationship between housing and health, and the socioeconomic impacts of housing market disruptions.

Pfeiffer is Principal Investigator of the Arizona Research Center for Housing Equity and Sustainability (ARCHES), a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Hispanic Serving Institution Center of Excellence jointly led by ASU's Morrison Institute for Public Policy and University of Arizona's Drachman Institute. ARCHES is advancing knowledge and evidence-based solutions related to problems of housing security, climate, and health in the arid Southwest through 19 research projects on 1) Equitable Housing Growth and Production to Support Hispanic and Underserved Households, 2) Healthy Homes and Aging Communities, and 3) Housing Innovations for Resilience in the Arid Southwest.

Pfeiffer's current research on housing and health explores whether single-family home garages and driveways form an adaptive neighborhood infrastructure that has the potential to offer broad public benefits by studying how residents use these spaces for purposes other than to park cars and their potential future use in addressing pressing community issues like housing affordability, social isolation, and exposure to extreme heat. Pfeiffer also is advancing knowledge on the neighborhood built environment drivers of subjective wellbeing (aka "happiness") by examining how living in arid ecosystems and among garage homes -- car-oriented single-family homes where the garage and driveway take up a large portion of the front yard --  relate to residents' subjective wellbeing. Pfeiffer's current research on housing and social equity integrates housing planning and policymaking and anti-discrimination law to better understand and help dismantle the "legal hack" of use of racial code words in grounds for opposition to affordable and diverse housing in local decision making. 

Pfeiffer teaches housing planning and policy and planning methods. She recently co-created an award-winning course on Zoning for Equity, which is collaboratively taught at seven institutions nationwide. Her teaching excellence has been recognized through her students’ receipt of state and national planning awards and her nomination for eight university teaching and mentoring awards. 

Pfeiffer is deeply committed to community partnerships to help solve pressing housing, health, and social-equity issues and maintains an active agenda of community and professional service. She is Senior Associate Editor at Journal of Urban Affairs, President of the Board of Directors for the Southwest Fair Housing Council, Vice President of Communications for the Rover Elementary PTA, and Park Steward with the City of Phoenix's desert mountain preserves. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.