Sharon Krefetz, Ph.D.
Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein'64 Distinguished Professor
Associate Professor
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.
Education
A.B., Douglass College, 1967
M.A., Brandeis University, 1970
Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1975
Current Research and Teaching
Dr. 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 publications are “State Legislative Attacks on Exclusionary Zoning,” a chapter in The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion, edited by Daniel D’Oca et al. (New York: Actar Publishing, 2014), and a review of the book, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty, by Xavier de Souza Briggs et al., in Urban Affairs Review, vol. 48, No. 2, March 2012. In addition to her articles and papers on affordable housing policies and politics, Dr. 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 recently chaired the "Partners for Housing" Conference at Clark University where participants discussed the efforts partnerships make to increase and preserve the supply of affordable housing; the challenges they encounter; and the changes they deem necessary to increast their impact. She teaches courses on Urban Politics and Policies, Housing Policies and Politics, Women and Politics, and Research Methods.
Dr. 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 Co-Editor of its 2001 State of the Nation’s Housing report.