Cambridge Citizens Coalition: Our endorsements and our history
The Cambridge Citizens Coalition was formed by neighborhood group leaders frustrated with the unresponsiveness of our city government on core issues. Its mission is to balance development interests with the environment, housing affordability, infrastructure and preservation. The 2021 City Council election race outcome will have a significant effect on the future of Cambridge. Voting is underway and Tuesday is Election Day. The selection of a new city manager is an important decision immediately facing our next council.
The coalition has endorsed four great candidates for City Council. Two endorsees are newcomers: Nicola Williams, a Caribbean-American businesswoman who nearly won a seat on the council in 2019, and East Cambridge resident and data analyst Dana Bullister. It also has endorsed two terrific incumbents: architect, urban designer and neighborhood advocate Dennis Carlone, as well as Patty Nolan, an accomplished business consultant, former School Committee member and now staunch good-government advocate. They are terrific individually and will work well together to bring critical change to city governance. One of our selection factors this year again was donations – percentages from local Cambridge residents and those without real estate interests.
Our city’s tax policy long has stimulated runaway growth, now in biotech as well as infotech mega-corporations such as Google and Amazon, which is about to add a large number of employees. These employees join the workforce already in place at our various medical facilities, renowned educational institutions and the burgeoning offices and labs at Alewife and North Point.
The pace of commercial development in Cambridge has drawn vast international property investment interests who regularly bid up the value of our modest 7.097-square-mile urban footprint. Increasingly, long-term Cambridge residents, particularly our renters, are being forced out through gentrification and displacement.
Under the development pressure we face, market-rate housing we build sells for $1 million or more per unit and rents for $2,500-plus for the smallest apartments. As we build more, more of our diminishing tree canopy is being removed (more than 20 percent in the past decade) along with critical open spaces (particularly in lower-income areas).
It is a simple fact that there are more jobs than residents of Cambridge. It is also the case that most Cambridge residents who are employed work outside the city. These facts confront us with a stark reality: It is not possible to house all who might wish to live in our city. In 2020, Cambridge had 51,882 housing units for our 118,400 population, or around one unit for every two people. With 112,800 commuters, if each wanted to move here, our housing stock would need to triple to meet the goal of housing everyone who works here, along with requisite schools, hospitals, fire/police, water, electricity and other infrastructure needs.
While the group A Better Cambridge has a stated policy to enable everyone who wants to live here to do so, this will never work, because our city policy favors building more commercial development than housing and land costs are being driven up by deep-pocketed development interests. This drastically limits who can afford to buy – increasingly, newly arrived wealthy professionals. Sadly, elected and appointed city government officials exacerbate this shift by welcoming an endless stream of commercial development without any consideration for housing or infrastructure. This all leads to a never-ending spiral of more housing leading to more commercial construction to maintain tax rates, leading to more housing to house some of the new employees, leading to more commercial construction to maintain tax rates and on and on ad infinitum, the only constant being building more and more.
Despite these trends, Cambridge maintains one of the highest percentages of affordable housing in the state. Here too we need oversight, since new affordable housing units now cost more than $900,000 to build – exclusive of land prices. What can be done? Members of CCC have helped draft an Advancing Housing Affordability zoning petition that seeks to modify single-family housing to create more units within the footprint of existing structures and advances a far more areawide solution to housing and other issues.
The coalition is a new organization; it is not infallible. But we work hard to represent the views of residents across the city and bring in professionals to help with research. When called for, we have been happy to correct errors and images, and will continue to do so. Following in the tradition of our predecessor nonprofit, the citywide Cambridge Civic Association, we hope to be around a long time and both grow and change as the city itself moves forward. In seeking to emulate the CCA’s 58-year run, the coalition emphasizes a balanced approach emphasizing good government, concerns about housing costs (rental prices, among others), neighborhood livability and an array of other issues.
We emerged from a collection of neighborhood leaders from across the city, individuals and groups that often are at the frontlines in addressing core issues of government transparency, good design, smart development, housing concerns, the environment and good governance more generally. As with any sincere effort, we understand and expect that our advocacy will draw criticism.
Sadly, in recent months our vital good government process of deliberation and compromise no longer prevails. Too often, commission members and community commenters are attacked or denigrated on social media for their statements by A Better Cambridge allies and leaders. The coalition and our City Council endorsees have been similarly attacked using mischaracterizations and lies, often advanced with personal animus and a destructive political style of intimidation, bullying and slander.
The coalition has posted a document addressing some of this but has refused to sink into the social media quagmire created by ABC provocateurs, seemingly aimed at silencing CCC, neighborhood groups or those who support historic preservation and the environment. The latter are seen to stand in the way of the commercial development and “build, baby, build” mantra they espouse.
Accusations of homophobia and exclusionist practices have also been leveled. These practices are never acceptable, and the coalition has not engaged in this type of behavior. Baseless charges emerged a year ago from an East Cambridge discussion in which a local resident (not affiliated with the coalition) wrote what one of our members aptly described as a “mean, nasty and indefensible” comment about an individual who had often clashed with and attacked other residents. According to our member, who resides in this neighborhood, this statement was not homophobic because LGBTQ issues were not involved. Our member was a charter member of the Mass Lesbian and Gay Bar Association (now the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association) and notes that falsely accusing individuals of homophobia is hate speech that diminishes the real pain of homophobic attacks everywhere. It is time to move beyond this spectacle of political bullying to address the many serious issues facing the city.
Unless a “good government” majority of councillors can be elected to replace or out-vote the current pro-developer councillors, the Cambridge so many residents love will be a distant memory, replaced by taller, denser high-rises with fewer trees and less green space. And this at a time when the climate crisis is upon us and Cambridge remains especially ecologically vulnerable. The health and welfare of all Cambridge residents at all income levels is at serious risk.
The Cambridge Citizens Coalition
Calling someone or something homophobic can be true or false (in this case, true), fair or unfair (fair), but it’s hard to see how it’s hate speech, unless we’re all just allowed to make up our own definitions for words now.
Anyone who wants to can read about the, yes, homophobic harassment of Loren Crowe and CCC’s bizarre insertion of themselves into that situation here, in Loren’s own words: https://lorencrowe.com/part-3-a-fair-but-partial-account-of-the-cambridge-citizens-coalitions-activities-since-2019-6a312bd85455
Some things never change. No matter what the issue or the topic or the subject at hand, If the CCC is involved, ABC is sure to bring up a way to direct Cambridge Day readers to read the blog of Loren Crowe.
CCC writes, “Its mission is to balance development interests with the environment, housing affordability, infrastructure and preservation.” CCC mentions the candidates it has endorsed. It discusses city tax policy, runaway growth, the pace of commercial development, the city’s diminishing tree canopy, the fact that there are more jobs than residents in the city. CCC states that ABC’s goal is to house anyone and everyone who wants to live here, which is totally unrealistic.
CCC states that “elected and appointed city government officials exacerbate this shift by welcoming an endless stream of commercial development without any consideration for housing or infrastructure.” This drives ABC to promote more commercial development which leads to ABC’s desire for more affordable housing.
As CCC states, the fact that “Cambridge maintains one of the highest percentages of affordable housing in the state,” apparently means nothing to ABC. However, apparently what does mean everything to this author, Jess and to ABC, is to avoid any discussions of the issues raised in the CCC letter and to refocus the reader’s attention on baseless accusations of homophobia that ABC has encouraged Cambridge Day readers to focus on in the past and not ABC’s unrestrained, badly planned and blatant warehousing of those eligible for Affordable Housing.
I welcome the positive tone of much of this letter. But I could be happier about the attack on ABC. Not because I think ABC is undeserving of criticism; I don’t. But we’re not going to get out of this “quagmire” until we stop having a circular firing squad every time a housing issue comes up. Rather than shifting blame onto ABC, why not continue the gracious tone of the rest of your letter and simply apologize to anyone who may have been offended as you were finding your footing as a new group? That would be a breath of fresh air, and it would likely get a good response from a lot of people.
A Better Cambridge Citizens Coalition??
We hate them! We’re the United people’s front of Cambridge.
Splitters!
The accusations that CCC has engaged in homophobia are not baseless. I won’t discuss the incident that happened last October; the link that Jess posted above explains what happened, and anyone can read it and follow the links to judge for yourselves.
Instead, let’s talk about this comment from last week’s “Frogs ‘R’ Us” op-ed:
“CCC almost daily is attacked as homophobic, racist, homeowners and just plain old!! Why? A CCC member had the audacity to challenge the legitimacy of a complaint lodged by someone who plastered the internet with his own photos in bondage garb that he creates and hawks? No one is allowed to even mention that????”
This comment was left by someone who is almost certainly a member of CCC’s advisory board. The evidence can be found in the second tweet in this thread: https://twitter.com/LorenCrowe/status/1452638932852740102
Her comment is undeniably homophobic. To claim otherwise is an act of self-delusion. This commenter is personally attacking Loren on the basis of his lifestyle, which is inextricably linked with his gayness. It’s abundantly clear that the commenter is greatly offended by what Loren does on his own time. “No one is allowed to even mention that????” she asks, with four question marks.
Why does it matter that he sells kinky underwear? It’s entirely irrelevant to the policy debates we’re having in Cambridge. But she mentions it because she has a problem with the way Loren lives his life. That’s homophobic.
If anybody still wants to argue that describing this as homophobic is baseless, I ask: How else would you describe it?
It’s hard to feel like any of these groups are representative of anyone.
“According to our member, who resides in this neighborhood, this statement was not homophobic because LGBTQ issues were not involved.”
Are you serious?!?!
I’m shocked that anyone could describe the attack on Loren Crowe that led to the attacker’s resignation and the City Council unanimously approving policy orders impacting oversight of neighborhood associations as anything other than homophobic and sexual harassment.
https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/cambridge-chronicle-tab/2020/11/17/ecpt-members-speak-against-hostile-culture-after-board-member-resigns/6309006002/