The Boston Housing Authority is a public agency of the city of Boston, Massachusetts that provides subsidized public housing to low- and moderate-income families and individuals. In the federal government model of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, BHA is a public housing agency. As such, BHA administers federal government assistance programs and monies for locally subsidized housing. With 70 developments, and serving almost 26,000 people across over 12,600 public housing units, it is the largest public housing authority in New England. It also offers partial subsidies for private housing, assisting another 32,000 people, and administers federal Section 8 vouchers. The agency's performance is periodically reviewed by a nine-member council, the BHA Monitoring Committee, which reports to the mayor.
History
The BHA was established on October 1, 1935 by the mayor and city council of Boston under Massachusetts General Law allowing cities and towns of Massachusetts to establish housing authorities. According to Massachusetts law, its mission was to be responsible for providing decent, safe and sanitary housing for families unable to afford housing without public subsidies. BHA was also charged with clearing substandard, decadent or blighted open areas and urban redevelopment, although this responsibility was later transferred to the Boston Redevelopment Authority in 1957. The first BHA housing projects were opened between 1938 and 1942. The management and governance of the BHA is different from that of other housing authorities since 1975, when BHA was sued in Boston City Housing Court by a group of BHA tenants, represented by Greater Boston Legal Services, regarding poor conditions in housing projects under the authority's control. As a result of the ruling which was in favor of the tenants, a court-appointed master prepared a report listing recommendations that provided the basis for a consent decree signed in 1977 by BHA, Greater Boston Legal Services and the Boston Public Housing Tenants Policy Council. The decree listed a series of improvements that BHA was supposed to make over the course of three years. The master, responsible for monitoring BHA's compliance with the consent decree, gave approval for all major decisions made by the BHA board and administrator. In 1979, the judge ruled that BHA had failed to satisfactorily fulfill the terms of the consent decree and BHA was placed in receivership, with its board of commissioners and administrator replaced by a court-appointed receiver. Since 1990, when the receivership ended, BHA has been directed by an administrator whose activities are reviewed by a nine-member monitoring committee appointed by the mayor of Boston. Kathryn Bennett was named Acting Administrator in July of 2019.
List of developments
, the BHA oversees 70 developments across 13 Boston neighborhoods. Of them, 38 are designated for elderly and disabled housing and 32 are designated for families.
