Kenzie Bok “The Past, Present, and Future of Public Housing”
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About this Event
In the 25th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture
, presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
, Kenzie Bok
, CEO of the Boston Housing Authority and former Boston City Councilor, will bring together her experiences as a pioneering public housing administrator and intellectual historian to explore the past, present, and future of public housing in the United States. She will discuss how justice, fairness, and the role of government have shaped public housing, and how these ideas must evolve to meet today’s interconnected challenges of affordability, climate change, and inequality.
Following the lecture, Chris Herbert
, Managing Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, will moderate a conversation with Bok and Bernardo Zacka
, an associate professor of political science at MIT, whose interests include the moral dilemmas that public service workers encounter when enacting public policy and how the architecture of welfare offices can shape interactions with citizens.
Speaker
Kenzie Bok
is the administrator and CEO of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), which oversees approximately 10,000 affordable rental units in 56 developments and administers nearly 15,000 rental vouchers. Under her leadership, the BHA has become a national leader in decarbonizing public housing, renovating aging units, and expanding the supply of affordable homes, advancing mixed-income development on public land. Bok has served two terms on Boston City Council, where she led efforts to increase funding for rental vouchers and affordable homeownership programs. She also co-authored Boston’s groundbreaking Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing zoning amendment, helped create a green jobs program, and spearheaded the appropriation process for the city’s American Rescue Plan funds, which provided over $250 million for affordable housing. Her leadership is informed by her training as a historian. She received an MPhil and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a BA from Harvard and has served as a lecturer at Harvard.
Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.
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