Being a welcoming community means for all, including future residents with lower incomes
As two people who hope to serve you on the City Council and whose families have lived in Cambridge for generations, we want to be clear that we value the diversity that makes Cambridge great. In a recent essay (“The Affordable Housing Overlay: A first-year report,” Aug. 19), the Cambridge Citizens Coalition asserted that state and federal funding should not be used to build affordable housing because it allows low-income people from outside Cambridge to move to our city. As two people whose ancestors were once “outsiders” who moved to Cambridge, we find this position to fly in the face of our progressive values.
Our families came to Cambridge in 1918 and 1938, respectively. They were immigrant families who not only moved to Cambridge to provide a better life for their children but invested in the community and made the Cambridge that so many now want to “protect.” We heard stories of how they had to fight for acceptance all those years ago. It is disheartening to see those same attitudes exist today. It is also shameful to see the argument framed as a choice between current residents and people who seek to live here. We never hear this argument when those “outsiders” have the means to pay $1,000 a square foot. Cambridge has the ability and the obligation to care for longtime lower-income residents as well as those seeking to move here.
No matter how long you or your family has lived in Cambridge, we were all new once. We are a sanctuary city that tells immigrants that they will be safe here. Our only public high school has students from around the world – some whose families are from Cambridge and some who moved here recently. We are a welcoming community.
The Ideas expressed in the CCCs essay do not align with the majority of people who call, and have called, Cambridge home. One cannot paint “Black Lives Matter” on a fence or hang a sign saying “all are welcome” while building a virtual wall around our city to prevent lower-income people from moving here. No one questions the right of a person to live in Cambridge if they can afford a million-dollar home; we shouldn’t question the right of a person to live in Cambridge if they qualify for affordable housing. The folks who clean your houses, serve your food and drink, educate your children, keep your streets clean and your homes safe are as essential as every other resident, despite their lower income. We hope that the members of the CCC will amend their values as stated in the recent essay and work toward creating inclusive and just policies that reflect the long-held values of this wonderful city.
Marc McGovern, city councillor
Joe McGuirk, candidate for City Council
Please give this a rest…
…..yes please give the exclusion of future residents a rest.
Cambridge is about equality for all not just those privileged enough to live here.
Climb out of your ivory tower, Cambridge!
The authors have a funny definition of shameful and a challenging relationship with basic math.
They seem to believe that Cambridge has an infinite amount of space for laboratories in East Cambridge, and an infinite amount of space for housing in West Cambridge.
Their vision for our city is high rises everywhere, as they have already done in Alewife. This is wonderful for the real estate interests that fund their campaigns. But not so wonderful for the citizens they purport to represent. It’s shameful.
^^^^^ Yes Cambridge DOES have a limited amount of land…..but that doesn’t phase CCC … it is all about build baby build. But if that is the case, should there not be room for all?
Sam Noubert, I think you have CCC confused with somebody else. CCC has never believed in build, baby, build; that would be A Bigger Cambridge. It’s in the name.
I wonder how the rest of the world sees this. Does any newcomer, regardless of means, have a right to live in Honolulu? Tokyo? Paris? Seems to me, there’s a lot of very nice places in the world for families to get their start, that aren’t Paris, or Cambridge. A lot of them are in Massachusetts.
Apparently, nothing will satisfy Marc “More Floors” McGovern and his cronies until all of Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Street, Broadway, First St., Main St., Brookline St., River St., Western Ave., Pemberton St., Green St., Harvard St., Concord Ave., Garden St., Linnean St., Huron Ave., Walden St., Sherman St., Rindge Ave., Pemberton St. and even the Alewife Brook Parkway are filled with ugly, towering, massive brick and concrete structures, five to seven to nine or more floors each in order to house everyone who ever fleetingly thought “Gee, I wonder what it would be like to live in Cambridge.”
As others have stated, Cambridge does not have an infinite amount of space for laboratories in East Cambridge and an infinite amount of space for housing in the rest of the city.
But that won’t stop the Affordable Housing Overlay folks. If they have their “Let’s turn Cambridge into a high-rise heaven for our real-estate developer campaign donors” way, eventually nobody will want to live here anyway. They will happily turn Cambridge into NYC Junior, where there are not enough trees, shade, greenspace or recreational areas, not enough potable water, not enough electricity, and absolutely not enough parking; all of this in an ever-increasing, global-warming flood plain.
I think Marc McGovern and Joe McGuirk are misrepresenting the position of CCC. The CCC article expressed concern that only 70% of affordable housing units go to Cambridge residents, with a wait list of 20,000 including many out-of-state applicants. While we may well want to welcome new arrivals, it would take an awful lot of city money to welcome them all into affordable housing! CCC suggests that if at least some of Cambridge’s affordable housing funds were dedicated to city-built housing, or perhaps to rental assistance and support for home ownership for lower-income people, that would be more effective at combating the problem of gentrification, where current Cambridge residents are driven out by rising prices. McGovern and McGuirk present this reasonable concern as an attempt to “build a wall” around our city. They also suggest that CCC wants to reject all state and Federal funding — the CCC article did not say that, just that dedicated City funding could more directly assist current city residents threatened with eviction or being forced out by rising prices.