City Councilor Kenzie Bok will become the new leader of the Boston Housing Authority, a role she’ll begin to transition into next month, creating a vacancy in the District 8 seat, Mayor Michelle Wu announced.
Bok will officially take the reins of the public agency charged with providing affordable housing to more than 62,000 Boston residents later this summer, when current Administrator Kate Bennett steps down.
“The Boston Housing Authority has been a lifeline for generations of Boston families, and in this moment of housing crisis, the BHA must be a model for housing as health, safety, opportunity and community,” Wu said in a statement.
“Kenzie brings a deep commitment to our BHA communities along with an expansive vision of how public housing should anchor our neighborhoods and city.”
Bok, 33, was the senior advisor for policy and planning at BHA, before being elected to represent District 8 on the City Council in 2019. She spearheaded BHA’s efforts to vary the subsidy amount of federal housing vouchers by zip code, rather than providing the same financial support for all applicants applying to live in Greater Boston.
This allowed voucher recipients greater flexibility in determining where they wanted to live, “and continues to be an impactful program today,” Wu’s office said.
“Public housing is a public good, and all of Boston benefits when our public housing communities are strong,” Bok said in a statement.
“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.”
The mayor’s office, in announcing the leadership change, also pointed to Bok’s efforts to help lead a successful ballot initiative to enact the Community Preservation Act in Boston in 2016, “which has generated tens of thousands of dollars for affordable housing in the city.”
Bok replaces Bennett, who was appointed as BHA administrator in 2020 after working as senior deputy administrator and other lower-level positions since 1998.
Bennett oversaw capital improvements and redevelopment projects throughout Boston during her time at BHA, keeping the agency “resident-centric.” She has worked in affordable housing for 25 years, managing such programs for the cities of Chelsea and Newton before joining the city’s housing authority, the mayor’s office said.
The outgoing administrator said she was “delighted” that Bok was selected as her replacement, saying that the city councilor was the “right person to take BHA to the next level.”
“She is passionate about the authority and its mission,” Bennett said. “She knows our staff and residents, and she is a brilliant housing advocate.”