During the Boston City Council’s meeting on Wednesday, Councilor Kenzie Bok, representing Boston’s 8th District, offered a letter of resignation to the council.
Toward the end of the meeting, a letter was read out by City Clerk Alex Geourntas that Bok drafted announcing she would “irrevocably resign” from her position as city councilor. An applause followed the announcement.
“It has been truly an honor to serve as the District 8 city councilor,” Bok wrote. “I have treasured every opportunity to make a difference for our residents.”
Bok left her position as she was selected by Mayor Michelle Wu to be the next administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, the city’s agency devoted to the creation, preservation and management of affordable housing.
Bok, a Boston native, has been a longtime advocate for affordable housing.
While working outside of the government, she was a major advocate for the successful 2016 Community Preservation Act aimed at increasing funding for affordable housing programs.
Later, she served as a senior policy advisor at BHA where she led another successful effort to change the way Section 8 housing vouchers were valued.
The change Bok enacted made it so that instead of being issued at a fixed rate, voucher values would increase correspondingly with the housing prices in different neighborhoods. This allowed people using vouchers to move into areas which afforded more economic opportunity while helping to integrate the city in terms of race and income.
During the meeting, Bok spoke on items relating to fire and emergency disaster relief. The Committee on City Services and Innovation Technology heard from the city of Cambridge about their fund vehicle to help with those events.
“I think it was really interesting to hear about [the fund vehicle] and the structure of that trust, and it seems like a good potential complement to the work that our departments do,” Bok said.
Bok later discussed the necessity of improving public infrastructure to improve disabled access throughout Boston, and how some change has already been made.
“The city is officially changing its specification on those plastic tactile pads that go on the pedestrian ramps,” Bok said. “They are going to be switching to cast iron as the standard … I think that’s going to be great for accessibility around the city.”
Bok has served as the District 8 city councilor since 2020 and will formally exit her position on April 28.
