Cambridge doesn’t write checks it can’t cash, but its officials and institutions aren’t shy about putting a pin in a calendar square and moving it when a date has come and gone without action.
One problem people had with a plan to remake 26 acres in Kendall Square: not enough low-priced Massachusetts Institute of Technology apartments to keep some 2,400 graduate students and others from competing to get market-rate rentals from other city residents. Critics from inside and outside the school hoped MIT would build as many as 5,000 units, but the commitment was for about 300 instead. And those canal-side units will tend toward the expensive, as would be expected at a sought-after, high-end address (although 18 percent are to be set aside for low-income tenants).
In winning its zoning, the university said its plans for Kendall remained flexible and promised a Graduate Student Housing Working Group that would look at housing needs for the MIT community. It created the group in March, with leader former chancellor Phillip Clay saying he was “delighted that we are now ready to proceed with our work. We will work hard to accomplish as much as we can before the end of the term.”
Three new missed deadlines in Cambridge issues
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One problem people had with a plan to remake 26 acres in Kendall Square: not enough low-priced Massachusetts Institute of Technology apartments to keep some 2,400 graduate students and others from competing to get market-rate rentals from other city residents. Critics from inside and outside the school hoped MIT would build as many as 5,000 units, but the commitment was for about 300 instead. And those canal-side units will tend toward the expensive, as would be expected at a sought-after, high-end address (although 18 percent are to be set aside for low-income tenants).
In winning its zoning, the university said its plans for Kendall remained flexible and promised a Graduate Student Housing Working Group that would look at housing needs for the MIT community. It created the group in March, with leader former chancellor Phillip Clay saying he was “delighted that we are now ready to proceed with our work. We will work hard to accomplish as much as we can before the end of the term.”
The zoning was passed in April, though, with residents and even councillor Leland Cheung expressing concern that a report on housing from the working group wouldn’t come until some three months later – that is, July.
But July and August have come and gone without a peep from the group.
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