Housing as History: New Directions for Boston’s Subsidized Housing: Learning from the Past

Boston has been a national leader in efforts to bring much needed public and affordable housing to its residents. However, the city’s housing legacy is as complicated as it is innovative. This is the final program in a four-part series that will look at the history of six housing sites across the city and examine the conditions for affordable and public housing today, highlighting the challenges—and opportunities—that lie ahead for Boston.

In this program, William McGonagle, former Administrator, Boston Housing Authority; Soni Gupta, Director of Neighborhoods and Housing, The Boston Foundation; Lawrence Vale, Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, MIT; Sandra Henriquez, Executive Director, Detroit Housing Commission; former administrator and CEO, Boston Housing Authority; and moderator David Luberoff, Deputy Director, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies will discuss what we have learned in the last 50 years of planning, building and managing public and affordable housing and what the future looks like for the city and America.

As neighborhoods across Boston face enormous development pressure, there is a risk that low-income residents will be forced out of the city. Social disruption due to gentrification, shifting government policies and programs, and the challenges of climate change make the future of affordable housing in Boston precarious. In the past, Boston modeled creative and successful solutions to dire housing problems, and there is hope that the city can continue to deploy innovative policies that will brighten the future for all city residents. Our final panel in this series will look at the future of affordable housing in Boston, taking stock of past lessons learned.

This program is made possible by the generosity of Mass Humanities and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.