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City Councilor Kenzie Bok to lead Boston Housing Authority
Boston's District 8 city councilor will begin transitioning to the new role in May.
Boston’s District 8 City Councilor Kenzie Bok will be the next administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, Mayor Michelle Wu announced Wednesday.
Bok, 33 and now in her second term on the council, was first elected in 2019 after serving as senior adviser for policy and planning at the BHA.
She is slated to begin a transition period next month, with current Administrator Kate Bennett scheduled to depart “later this summer,” Wu’s office said in a news release.
Wu said Bok, a Bay Village native, will bring “a deep commitment to our BHA communities along with an expansive vision of how public housing should anchor our neighborhoods and city.”
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“I’m thrilled for her leadership and look forward to building on the strong foundation set under Kate’s stewardship by the entire BHA team,” Wu said in a statement. “We are all so grateful for Kate’s decades of service to our residents and work to ensure a smooth transition over the coming months.”
Bok, in her own statement, said, “Public housing is a public good, and all of Boston benefits when our public housing communities are strong.
“I’m so excited to return to BHA to put our residents and voucher-holders at the heart of everything our City does, by providing safe high-quality housing for every family and by ensuring the best access to jobs, services, and all the opportunities Boston has to offer.,” Bok added. “To truly have a City for all, we have to boldly invest at the local, state, and federal levels in the BHA housing that continues to anchor so many of our communities.”
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The BHA manages roughly 10,000 rental units of public housing across the city, housing over 17,000 residents. The agency also administers about 15,000 Section 8 rental-assistance vouchers, assisting 34,000 people in acquiring housing.
In her tenure at BHA, Bok was a driving force behind the agency’s initiative to vary the subsidy provided by the Section 8 vouchers.
Previously, subsidies were provided at the same rate across all of Greater Boston. But under the change, subsidies are now tied to zip codes, allowing voucher-holders to afford to live in more affluent neighborhoods than before.
A Boston Globe report published in November found results, so far, have proved promising, with more voucher-holders moving into what are known as “high-opportunity” areas, where employment rates are higher and poverty is lower.
As a private citizen in 2016, Bok also led the ballot-initiative campaign to put the Community Preservation Act into city law. Wu’s office said the act has since generated “tens of millions of dollars for affordable housing in the city.”
As a city councilor, Bok has chaired committees on the city’s annual budget and has led around how Boston should use money received under the American Rescue Plan Act.
She has prioritized affordable housing in her policy work, including in 2021, when Wu signed into law a measure Bok co-sponsored to eliminate parking requirements for affordable housing, lowering construction barriers for new developments.
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