Former Haverhill Appeals Board member Kassie Infante has been named the inaugural director of engagement and inclusion at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership.
Infante was one of three zoning board members last January to support a developer’s application to expand the size of a South New Street lot as part of a larger plan to build four houses near Wood School. Other board members in favor were Lynda M. Brown and Magdiel Matias, but the application was ultimately rejected. Infante’s explanation, given in a later WHAV housing segment, stirred controversy.
“The underlying message, or at least how I interpret it, and how I know even my own family members do, is, families don’t belong in that neighborhood. You don’t belong,” she said. “And so [for] me, as someone who is probably going to have a family soon, as a person of color, it’s reminiscent of the type of exclusion that we’re supposed to be against.”
Wood School neighbors expressed outrage at how their opposition was characterized. Lisa McElroy, for example, asked Infante to issue a public apology and lose her position on the zoning board for, in McElroy’s view, calling her neighborhood racist.
Established by the state in 1990, the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, in naming Infante, referred to “an era of significant backlash against Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives and the scaling back or dismantling of programs.”
“At MHP we prioritize cultivating a sense of belonging as the ultimate goal of our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” said Executive Director Clark Ziegler. “Now more than ever this work is essential to boosting staff engagement and advancing our collective mission of providing affordable homes and better lives for the people of Massachusetts.”
“I am excited and eager to build from MHP’s decades-long leadership in the affordable homeownership space by reaffirming our values internally and adapting them to our external work for maximum equitable impact,” says Infante. “DEIB values are integral to cultivating policies, practices and programs that center both our individual/collective well-being and can reckon with our shared history of exclusion and bias against systematically oppressed groups.”
An agency statement added, “Infante comes to MHP as a leader in organizational cultural development, learning/education, operationalizing diversity and equity, and advocating for affordable housing.” She previously served as associate director of operations at Abundant Housing Massachusetts, a nonprofit statewide pro-housing organization and recipient of a 2024 MHP Housing Hero Award.
The agency, which recently rolled out the ONE+ mortgage program in gateway cities such as Haverhill, said Infante “will play a central role in shaping a culture that resonates both internally and externally, reaffirming MHP’s dedication to policies, practices and programs that center on an equitable and inclusive culture.”
Infante’s also an advisory board member for the National Welcoming Neighbor’s Network; an executive committee member of the Planners of Color Network, a community of planners, builders, community workers and professionals of color working to transform the built environment toward racial equity’ and co-founder of Homeplace Collective, an education consulting company.