Arthur Jemison: Not your typical ‘up from the projects’ story

Boston’s planning chief to depart for housing job in Detroit

Arthur Jemison was attending Amherst Regional High School in western Massachusetts when his parents, who had migrated from Detroit, split up. His father James, an instructor at the nearby UMass campus, had been bringing in most of the family’s income.

“There was a high-stakes divorce, and my mother had to kind of figure it out from scratch,” Jemison recalled.

Figure it out she did. Beverly Jemison signed up for public housing in Amherst. A home became available in a brand new development of 15 townhouses on Main Street, just blocks from the town center. The resilient mother moved into a unit there in 1980 with her son Arthur and daughter Jamileh.

“I feel like sometimes when people talk about public housing, they think all the stories are the same, like you grew up in Cabrini-Green (high-rises in Chicago) and you have your ’70s clothes on and all that,” Jemison said.

“I had a good tour,” he added. “My sister got her admission to University of Massachusetts Medical School at her public housing address. I got my invitation to become an urban planner at MIT at my public housing address.”

That housing experience in Amherst has shaped the life’s work of Jemison, 53, who departs Sept. 13 after two years as Boston’s first chief of planning and the first person of color to direct the Boston Planning and Development Agency, formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA.

Under Mayor Michelle Wu, Jemison guided the near-complete transfer of the independent local agency into the city’s planning department. The transition is in keeping with Wu’s plans to change the way the city plans its physical future.

“When you have an independent board with an independent agency that gets paid from the money that it earns from its real estate holdings, there’s a belief that it’s not really — at least in the mind of the mayor, and me, too — that it’s not responsive enough to the citizens,” Jemison said.

He described it as “change from being a kind of a rogue land bank that has zoning power and does whatever it wants into being a city department that’s responsible to the elected officials of the city and, importantly, the [city] council.”

Phil Clay, a retired professor of urban studies and planning at MIT, praised the change in bureaucratic structure.

“I think it was a good idea,” Clay said, because it “puts the public at the table.”

After Jemison graduated from UMass Amherst, he earned a master’s degree in city planning from MIT in 1994. He identified Clay as his mentor there.

“He was a very good student,” Clay said. “He’s done very well.”

Finding his niche

Jemison has ping-ponged between government planning and housing jobs in three cities: his native Detroit, Boston and Washington, D.C. Before taking his current job in 2022, he was assistant secretary of public and Indian housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a position that requires Senate confirmation.

One of the major reasons for returning to Boston, he said, was to be part of the administration of the city’s first mayor of color, Wu.

“I wanted to be a part of helping it change and to be  better,” he said. “It’s been a real honor in being able to work with her in doing that.”

Jemison had taken on the federal role at HUD after working in Detroit, where he helped the city recover from bankruptcy.

Earlier in his career, he held positions in Massport, the Boston Housing Authority, the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the state government.

At the BRA from 1998 to 2000, he was the regional planner for Roxbury, working on developing the neighborhood. He laid the groundwork for the transformation of the vacant Ferdinand furniture store into an office building, originally for the state Department of Public Health before the switch to the Boston School Department. He worked on the cleanup of “a very dirty brownfield site” just south of what was then called Dudley Square, now occupied in part by the district police station.

Under former governor Deval Patrick, he served as deputy undersecretary of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development.

Jemison’s professional journey was inspired his stay in public housing in the Amherst apartments known as Watson Farms.

“It made me want to do the work that I do,” he said. “That development. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know why. All I knew was I was moving. By the time I left, I knew a lot more, and I was like, ‘Wow, this has actually been hugely important to me and it could be hugely important to other people.’”

The career path didn’t become clear until he was at UMass Amherst, where he majored in social thought and political economy, a course of study that reflected the activist times. Jemison took up a campus advisor’s suggestion that he apply to a summer program at the University of California, Berkeley on public policy and international affairs, a program designed to interest students of color in fields like planning. Jemison got in and “became very excited about the field, and the chance to be a part of urban development.”

His sweet spot is housing. During his time in his current position, the BPDA board has approved about 11,500 units of housing, a third of them “income-restricted” or affordable, according to the agency.

“That’s what it’s about, man,” Jemison said. “At the end of the day, someone is going to move into that house for the first time. And I remember that. It was a life changing event … When they move in, there’s a chance that great things can happen to them.”

To accommodate expected growth in population, the city of Boston set a goal of building 69,000 new units by 2030.

But it takes more than housing, Jemison noted, to make a neighborhood. Public and private services like a school, grocery store and hardware store are required. That’s where planning comes in.

“So if I want a neighborhood to be great, I can’t stop at housing, right? You got to do those other things,” Jemison said.

Now, after a little more than two years with the city, in his third time around in Boston, Jemison said he is returning for family reasons to Detroit, where his wife, Annie Blais, and their younger two children have been living.

The original plan was for them to join him in Boston, where the oldest child attends an area college. But Blais, an educator who grew up in Boston, was diagnosed with a serious health problem several months after Jemison arrived here. She received treatment and has recovered but hasn’t felt up to making another move, Jemison said. On top of that, their two younger children are in high school — not the best time to move teenagers.

“Arthur is a family sort of guy,” Clay said.

A local planning expert noted that there has also been an internal shakeup in the city’s planning department and wondered if Wu may be trying to placate developers and real estate interests — both big campaign donors — as she seeks reelection next year. Political observers have speculated that wealthy Josh Kraft may challenge Wu for the mayoral seat.

When Jemison returns to the city of his birth, he will continue to pursue his passion as director of the Detroit Housing Commission, the equivalent of the Boston Housing Authority.

“Home is where family is. They’re in Michigan right now. So I am going back home,” he said. “I’m a big fan of the commonwealth, and a lot the great things that I’ve described happened to me here. My mom and dad are Detroiters and we’re Detroiters, and it’s my honor to work there.”

His mother, Beverly Jemison, still lives in Amherst. His sister Jamileh Jemison, a doctor, splits her time between Boston and Amherst.