SBNDC Spotlight: Grace Levin

Affordable housing is the defining crisis so many cities are facing, said Grace Levin. And she wants to be part of the solution.

Grace, a student in the Master's for Urban Planning Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is South Boston Neighborhood Development Corporation’s summer intern; part of her experience here will be solidifying what side of urban planning she wants to pursue. 

“I came in interested in being sort of a general planner,” she said, “but I think as I've taken more and more classes, and after this experience, too, I would love to continue working on affordable housing projects.

“[Affordable housing] can really change someone's life and have all these ripple effects,” said Grace, 26, who got her undergrad degree from Middlebury College in Vermont in sociology and anthropology.

“We are thrilled to have Grace onboard with South Boston NDC this summer,” said Donna Brown, executive director. “She brings her own talents and enthusiasm to urban planning and the projects she’s doing for SBNDC.”

During her time with South Boston NDC, Grace is doing research and writing for preconstruction zoning and funding applications pertaining to the organization's McDevitt Hall project.

South Boston NDC and Paraclete Inc. have entered into a purchase agreement to preserve the former St. Augustine’s convent, now known as McDevitt Hall, and convert the building into approximately 35 affordable apartments for seniors. 

“I’m learning so much about what it actually takes to get a project built and ready to go,” Grace said.

Urban planning was always in the back of Grace’s mind. Her interest in affordable housing goes back to her growing up in Los Angeles ... “just being in a city where the inaccessibility of housing is so visible.”

During her time at Middlebury, Grace had the opportunity to study abroad in Copenhagen, where she learned more about the urban planning field. 

“It just converged a lot of my interests.”

After graduating from Middlebury, Grace took a job in Austin, Texas, to be close to her family after they moved back to the state from California.

“I’ve lived in a lot of places where urban planning is just on the front of everyone’s minds,” she said, noting Austin is “a city where there are so many apparent urban planning issues.”

She did community engagement for a community art museum, then worked for a nonprofit food bank in Texas. 

The COVID pause made her reevaluate her life and realize she wanted to study urban planning.

“Whether it was working with artists or it was working with people who were trying to manage these huge emergency food lines, the kind of problem it went back to is people not being able to afford their rent and then all the things that fell through because they couldn't pay for their rent. I  wanted to learn how do we address those structural problems.

“It’s crazy how many things go back to housing,” she said.

“Going back to my experiences working with food banks and artists struggling to pay rent, it can really change someone's life. It starts with housing.”