Sharon Krefetz, Ph.D.

Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein'64 Distinguished Professor; Associate Professor, Department of Political Science; Director of the Steinbrecher Fellowship Program
Department of Political Science
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610-1477

Phone: 508-793-7300
Email: skrefetz@clarku.edu

Dr. Krefetz is the Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein ’64 Distinguished Professor in the Political Science Department. She joined the Clark faculty in 1972 and served as Dean of the Undergraduate College and Associate Provost from 1992-2000. She also served as Director of Clark’s Urban Development and Social Change Program from 2001-2010 and as Chair of the Political Science Department from 2008-January 2012.

Current Research and Teaching

Professor Krefetz has done extensive research on policies aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing for low and moderate-income households in U.S. cities and suburbs. A leading expert on the Massachusetts Affordable Housing and Land Use Appeals law, she has served as a consultant to the Connecticut Blue Ribbon Commission on Affordable Housing and for the American Planning Association’s Report on Regional Approaches to Affordable Housing. Her most recent paper on affordable housing policies and politics, which she co-authored with a Clark undergraduate and presented at the Northeast Political Science Association Annual Conference last November, is entitled “How the Landmark Massachusetts Affordable Housing and Land Use Appeals Act Survived the Most Recent Effort to Repeal It.” Her review of the book, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty, by Xavier de Souza Briggs et al., was published in the March 2012 issue of Urban Affairs Review. In addition to her articles and papers on affordable housing policies and politics, Krefetz is the author of a book entitled Welfare Policy-Making and City Politics and journal articles on urban economic revitalization politics, citizen participation, and city-county merger attempts. She teaches courses on Urban Politics and Policies, Housing Policies and Politics, Women and Politics, and Research Methods.

Professor Krefetz has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Urban and Regional Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Political Institutions; at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Housing Affordability Initiative of the Center for Real Estate; and most recently (Spring 2012) in the Public Policy Department at Tel Aviv University. From 2000-2002 she was a Fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University, where she served as Project Manager and Editor of its 2001 State of the Nation’s Housing report.