Cambridge is in the midst of a housing crisis. A city renowned for education and innovation is failing to meet one of its most fundamental needs: shelter. With a median cost of more than $3,000 for a one-bedroom apartment, we find ourselves beside Manhattan and San Francisco as one of the most expensive cities in the nation.
This year, we built only five housing units. Yes, just five. In a city of 50,000 homes, that’s not 1 percent or even 0.1 percent; it’s less than 0.01 percent. These numbers are not just statistics. They represent a profound failure to keep up with the needs of our community.
You can see the development log for 2023 here and filter it for completed projects.
We have taken some positive steps. The Affordable Housing Overlay and the elimination of parking mandates are significant achievements, but are not enough in comparison to the decades of exclusionary, anti-housing and anti-renter zoning that have shaped our city’s landscape.
You may think we are building lots of housing because we talk about it often. The truth is, we are not. The reality is stark. We don’t even have space to keep the children born in Cambridge here, let alone accommodate those drawn by the allure of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Kendall Square.
The fact is, we need to rezone the city, and we need to do it now.
Why rezoning?
1. It will allow more people to live here: With people moving to Cambridge for opportunities at Harvard, MIT and Kendall Square, we must create space not only for them but for the children born here who want to stay in their hometown.
2. It erases the legacy of redlining: Rezoning can help dismantle the inequities that haunt our zoning maps, bridge divides and create a more united community.
3. It makes our city more affordable: By increasing the housing supply, we can counter the skyrocketing rents that have become a hallmark of our city. This follows Minneapolis, which saw rents increase just 2 percent between 2017 and 2023 after enacting reforms.
4. It allows families to grow: With rezoning, adding an extra bedroom to welcome a newborn or a grandparent and making necessary changes to homes becomes a possibility, not a bureaucratic nightmare that requires an expensive special permit.
We stand at a critical juncture. We can continue to talk about housing without meaningful action, or we can take bold steps toward a city that reflects our shared values of inclusivity, innovation and compassion.
This election season, we stand at a critical juncture. We can continue to talk about housing without meaningful action, or we can take bold steps toward a city that reflects our shared values and the urgency of the moment.
Burhan Azeem, Cambridge city councillor
This post was updated to correct an editor’s error identifying the date on the construction log.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
I agree. The AHO alone is not a housing policy. We should have engaged this years ago as part of C2 in central square and the so called “envision master planning process.” It’ll be interesting to see where the people land on this. Construction costs are triple what they were a few years ago and rates are double what CDD’s nexus study, that “justified” moving inclusionary to 20%, stated it needed to be to be viable. Will the Council have the political will go lower inclusionary and put in place zoning that will actually produce real market rate housing?
5? – wrong. According to the city website: Cambridge Housing Starts in 2023 (half this year) = 94; last year 491 (2022), the year prior = 700 (2021); 535 (2020); 1014 (2021) etc. And let’s look at the “why.” Check with Inspectional services and you will see it is principally single-family homes that are being built (why? clients and cost). On the latter: the cost of construction has tripled the past 5 to 6 years. Equally problematic is parts. Not only are they hard to get but also time time delayed as a result of issues around China, COVID and other factors). Labor availability has been a factor too. Then there is the interest rate question. It is now at 8% to 14% (double what it was just a couple years ago). And developers and others are waiting for the interest rates to go back down. Right now, interest-wise there is nothing viable – even if zoning were magically to be changed. it is stunning that a post on this subject could be so ill-informed.
“(It will allow) the children born here who want to stay in their hometown (to do so).”
Not if all “we” are doing is building studio, one and two bed apartments.
Build some solid townhouses and put some lucky housing authority clients on the correct path to ownership. Institutionalization solves nothing.
“It allows families to grow (and make) necessary changes to homes”
Really? And which families would this be? The ones struggling to pay rent? Or the ones who have been the gentrifying force in the first place.
Strawberry Hill is gonna LOVE the opportunity….
I think the link “here” to the housing log is broken.
Williard is spot on with regard to single family houses, interest rates, and labor costs. A person who shall remain nameless at CDD once told me proudly that the department does not concern itself with market conditions. An odd statement considering all of their nexus studies 100% rely on market conditions. The time to change zoning was 10-15 years ago but then no one was fighting for it and the neighborhood groups would never allow it. We should be looking at the city as a whole to refine and clean up the nonsense in our ordinance and prepare for a better time. I love when people talk about gentrification in a city where the median home price is $2.2M and the average price per square foot is $967. Give it a rest friends. If you own your home and you bought between 1967 and 1997 YOU are the “gentrifier. People buying into todays market are just rich people buying expensive homes in the most expensive single family home market in Mass.
Cambridge built at least 1,242 housing units in 2022.
2023 is not over yet; you can’t say “this year we built”, past tense, if you mean calendar 2023. Depending on the exact dates something around 500-800 units were likely added in the past real year.
The stats used here (Cambridge Development Log) only include large-scale development projects. It’s simply incorrect to say that these are the only units added. Just dead wrong.
Ironically zoning changes to allow “adding a new bedroom” would not be captured by the statistics – even an entire new single family house is not in these stats. We’re talking lots over 10,000 square feet and so on.
Thank you to the editor for correcting previous errors but this piece is hugely misleading at the best.
Does the City even track how many net new homes are created? I’m not sure it tracks two- and three-family down-conversions to single families, which it would have to do to calculate the net total.
Housing starts are a different statistic than completed and occupied homes.
The dashboard linked to by the author shows that 1,148 housing units have building permits granted. 1,443 housing units have zoning permits granted or are by right developments. A further 2,429 units are just “blank”. Total we see for all stages (blank, pre-permitting, and permit of some type granted) is 5,217 units.
This seems wildly misleading. I’d love to see more housing units built, but it appears several thousand ARE in the process of being built.
I’d also like to see a historical average for this data. How long do housing units sit in each stage of the permitting process on average? How many units were in each category at the end of each calendar year for the last 20 years? How many did we actually build every year over that same period? Etc.
Astonishing that Burhan, a graduate of MIT (where “numbers” have always been so important [so important, in fact, that, for the most part, even their buildings have numbers instead of names]), could screw this information up so badly. But even more shocking is the fact that he isn’t demanding that his alma mater, MIT, build sufficient housing to house *all* of their graduate students, on land they *already own*, in housing that is both *attractive* and *affordable*, to them. This would free up perhaps hundreds of units of traditionally family-oriented housing in the rest of Cambridge which are currently occupied by groups of students who currently prefer to live off-campus and hope to live closer to their labs and departments than, for example, Allston or Brighton. MIT were also allowed to build MASSIVE PARKING GARAGES – RIGHT ON TOP OF THE KENDALL SQUARE ‘T’ STATION – too, but that’s not anything we’ve ever heard Burhan object to, or even utter a peep about. MIT have been great at fulfilling their real estate ambitions and wielding political influence with City Councillors in Cambridge, but evidently failed in their “education mission” when it comes to Councillor Burhan. Sad.
Wait until next year when only 3 houses are built – but on the positive side – do not have natural gas hook-ups. The other 2 properties, next year, could be injection centers. Cambridge needs more of that Mass/Cass energy that some of our counselors seem to love.
Azeem earns quite a few Pinocchio’s between this op-ed and his bravado for taking credit for recent policies merely by a perfunctory vote.
Especially egregious given his young and vulnerable constituents.
James this is great advert for you not running for Council again. Accusing Burhan of insufficient math skills when you had a tricky time counting to fifty is pretty funny; thank you. Burhan is counting completed projects to date and its 5 units. That is terrible in any city … except maybe Barre, Ma. When you filter for permitted projects you get to 1,148 which is decent but puts us way behind the established goal of 12.5k units by 2030. MIT is an easy target but they house way more than most institutions and its an unreasonable expectation (a hallmark of your “advocacy”) to think they could house 100% of grad students or that 100% of grad students would all want to live in MIT housing. You talk of political influence and just like Donald Trump, Patty Nolan, and Quinton Zondervan (who can count to 50 … well maybe Trump can’t) you provide no details or hard evidence; just your ire. Its not your fault though. The City has cultivated and even nurtured nonsense like yours for decades allowing you and people like you to suck the actual oxygen from the room with your finger pointing and rambling quasi-nostalgic Cambridge of Olde fan fiction. The truth is, sadly, your biggest contribution to the discourse has been your willingness to fill your plate at any community meeting making sure people who actually do the work aren’t left with an abundance of leftovers. Cheers.
The statistic being reported is clear as day. Amount of actual construction.
Hypothetical homes aren’t homes. What is wrong with you
This entire article is based on a fabrication. The cited city website clearly states that the Development Log is a list only of “large-scale development projects,” not single family, two family, or triple decker projects.
As for Councilor Azeem now taking credit for zoning reform and support for families, I would refer readers to my previously submitted zoning petition that allowed multi-family housing citywide, liberalized density limits, and reduced the need for special permits, all in the name of supporting families. Strange that he now supports such changes, when he could have moved forward with my proposal months ago but chose not to. Must be election season again.
Doug, anyone paying attention knows that CDD has been working with Councillor Azeem on a comprehensive plan for zoning reform and ending exclusionary zoning since last year.
You randomly submitting a citizen petition in the middle of that process while apparently lining up no support for it is neither here nor there, other than perhaps a sign that constantly insulting the Council may not be the best way to get things done. What exactly do you think that says for your own Council run?
Fact check: Hello Cambridge CDD has absolutely not been “working with Councillor Azeem on a comprehensive plan for zoning reform and ending exclusionary zoning since last year.” CDD has no such plan or zoning in the works. CDD has been “fielding” the AHO amendments which we first drafted over a year ago by Azeem and two other councilors. To his credit Azeem is the most aggressive Councilor in recent memory on zoning issues but to say he has been working with CDD directly would not only be an illegal charter violation it’s just plainly not true.
And here comes (anonymous) HelloCambridge coming to the rescue of Councilor Azeem again. Or maybe HelloCambridge actually is Councilor Azeem? I guess we may never know. In any case, I think it’s a stretch to say that the Councilor has been working on a plan since last year. According to the City’s own website, the last meeting on the topic was 11 months ago, and when I met with the Councilor back in May, he seemed disinterested at best. As for my own candidacy, voters won’t need to wait another 11 months for action if I’m elected. I’ll submit new zoning language that is supportive of families on day one of taking office, regardless of other Councilors’ support for it, because it’s the right thing to do. Enough study. Time for action.
Now, Patrick, You evidently haven’t bothered to do your due diligence… Had you spoken with your pal Robert Winters – or bothered to investigate yourself – you would know that I did, in fact, garner enough signatures. On my first sheet, I had 46 of 50, certified. (A pretty good rate of productivity, I might add.) When I got another 16 on my second sheet, well beyond the four more I knew I needed, I stopped, confident I had more than enough to qualify. Both sheets had already been properly notarized, but, in rushing right on to the next (second) sheet, I overlooked a narrow band just above the portion of the page labeled, “Petition™,” where – according to the Election Commission and the Law Department’s interpretation of requirements spelled out “in the Charter” – candidates must fill out *again* information completely duplicative of this same information [I had] already filled out in a notably larger “Candidate’s Statement” section directly above, on the very same page.
Others have evidently made this same easy-to-make mistake. (Of course, I wish I hadn’t.)
I would have thought that someone like yourself, who is constantly whining about “too much regulation” would be more sympathetic to people falling prey to antiquated, unnecessary, and senselessly bureaucratic regulations of this kind. (Evidently not.)
Butva number I *can* count to is 12. That would be the number of residential units you eliminated when you converted your building at Columbia and Main to a hotel. (A hotel and use I happen to like, as I’ve told you, but far from exemplary in addressing the alleged housing”shortage” in Cambridge. [Your claims about only competing with Airbnb don’t “add up” either, by the way…])
Cambridge has “grown” from a population of about 90,000 when I first settled here (340 years after my predecessors) to something approaching 120,000.
Who should be deciding how big Cambridge should be?? I believe this coming election is going to go a long way toward answering that question.
Oh, my, I’ve only just now had a chance to read the muck of Monsieur Patrick Barrett’s “comments,” if they can be called that, in his characteristically bullying and abusive style. You fancy yourself the “mayor” of Central Square – high aspirations, indeed (though your track record so far as self-appointed “boss” there leaves just a little to be desired, I should think) – but cruise along there as if you’re the only one who knows anything or has a right to an opinion, by bullying alone, and without ever having had to have actually been selected. (Nice work, if you can get it.) Influence? Proof? You have a brain, don’t you? Should we now demand evidence for that?? (Nobody influences anybody in your fantasy – or deliberately fraudulent – world, which it would be hard to believe even you – “Mr. Big Contributor” – truly believes.) Even you can’t fit everything into one insult, I’m sure. As for MIT, what makes you think they can’t house all their grad students?? Too poor?? Not enough land?? Had you read my comments before unleashing your inner-“bull”-dog you would have seen where I emphasized that – unlike now – the MIT housing would have to be both “attractive” and “affordable.” You may not have lived here long enough (evidently some sort of “sin” in your lexicon) to remember, but the issue and details of MIT’s capacity and obligation to house their graduate students, in particular, was well-vetted some years ago before the City Council, but they did not have the guts or intelligence to address it. Several prominent MIT-faculty, joined by leaders of the then Graduate Student Council, were advocating strongly for this. (Oh, sorry to use that “dirty” word “advocate,” an activity for which you evidently have nothing but contempt, though you spout off all the time on almost every issue, even appearing regularly online to extrude toxic emissions on everything from “gas stoves” to your latest hatreds.) I would encourage everyone to go to the OCPF website and investigate to whom you’re giving money (seeking no influence at all, of course, just thoroughly virtuous and innocent “civic engagement” on the part of “your-high-holiness”) and work hard for and contribute to almost anybody else! Perhaps when the likes of Patrick Barrett are done with whatever portions of Cambridge he can grab for his own excessive, mindless, consumption, there will be a few scraps left for those who have dared to living here – well, just a little too long to please the bloated nouveau riche and other “arrivistes.” Grifters, beware… Salud!
I look forward to you being really disappointed after those elections bono.
I note of thanks to commenters who prefer transparency over anonymity.
Even if I disagree with you, I appreciate your willingness to stand by your opinions instead of hiding behind them.
You know who you are (and so do I).
Correction: A note of thanks…