David Garcia

Director

David Garcia is the Policy Director at Up for Growth where he is responsible for building, stewarding and advocating for its portfolio of pro-housing policies. This follows a six-year stint for Garcia at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also its Policy Director. He led the center’s engagement in local, state, and federal housing policy and supported the generation of research-driven policy ideas, proposals, and papers.

David’s work and insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Before joining the Terner Center, David worked in real estate development in Stockton, California focused exclusively on infill projects in the downtown neighborhood. In this role, David managed various aspects of the development process, including development agreements, environmental review, and project design. Prior to that, David was a Research Analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, DC. At the GAO, David conducted evaluations and analyses of several different federal programs using a variety of methods, both quantitative and qualitative. David holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles as well as a Master’s in Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies in Baltimore, Maryland.