How an international student used her Kennedy School education to improve affordable housing financing in Massachusetts

Like many international students, Samya Mishra wanted to build on her existing professional skills with a master’s degree in public administration to benefit a global environment.

“I came to Harvard to see how expanding development finance would work as a tool in the public space,” said Mishra MPA 2024. “I wanted to better understand sustainable and creative ways of innovating in the space, and specifically how blended financing strategies used in the private sector could be utilized by the public finance sector.”

And despite her international connections—she has worked for financial institutions in her home country of India, in Qatar, and the Netherlands—she applied her new training locally, addressing the growing housing shortage in Massachusetts.

In a new policy brief released by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Mishra presents her research that launched Momentum Equity Fund, the first-in-the-nation state revolving fund to support mixed-income housing production, created under the Affordable Homes Act.

Through MassHousing, an independent agency created in 1966 to provide financing for affordable housing, and the Bringing Innovation to Lending and Development (BILD) program, Mishra helped lead the development and deployment of an innovative public-private financial commitment for the $50 million Momentum Fund. “We also approved and committed capital to three of the initially proposed mixed-income and affordable housing deals in East Milton, Allston and, most recently, in Grafton.”

A Rappaport Public Finance Fellowship with the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency gave Mishra the opportunity to work on this groundbreaking public investment tool. The Rappaport Public Finance Summer Fellowship supports graduate students in undertaking a summer research project related to public finance for a state or local government client in the Greater Boston area and is an offering of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, housed in the School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

“The Rappaport Institute is well known to decision-makers in state government,” said Mark Attia, director of MassHousing. “I have enjoyed a collaborative, long-term relationship with the Government Performance Lab and Taubman Center for State and Local Government at HKS, led by Jeff Liebman, and approached their team for a researcher with a very particular skill set including development finance and impact investment,” recalled Attia.

With the Momentum Fund, said Attia, Massachusetts was doing something novel in public finance. “Bringing in multinational finance and accounting experience was valuable. Samya’s background in fund development and her experience advising on similar instruments overseas was very informative in the early design phases of the program.”