Dr. Molly W. Metzger serves as chair for the Domestic Social and Economic Development concentration within the Master of Social Work program. She is also a faculty director at the Center for Social Development, and a faculty fellow at the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. Metzger’s research focuses on local, state, and federal housing policies, examining how these policies often reproduce patterns of inequity. She strives to build and share research with a host of community partners, in order to move housing policy toward the goals of racial and economic justice.

Metzger’s major projects have included a community-based participatory research project on public housing preservation in Chicago, a national analysis of the “Section 8” Housing Choice Voucher program, and a collaboration with the St. Louis Housing Authority, in which she and her team interviewed Section 8 renters about their housing experiences. Her edited book, Facing Segregation, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Metzger completed a BA in Women’s Studies from Carleton College and a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University. She serves as a board member at DeSales Community Development and the World Community Center, and is an active member of the Mann Elementary School PTO and St. Louis Public Schools’ Parent Action Council.