Challenger running for City Council for the first time
The candidate’s website
Background: Taiwanese physician and biologist | Focuses: Expanding mental health outreach and health care; affordable housing; and bike lanes
Q&A
Compiled by Matt Rocha
Hsu works as a physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and teaches at Harvard Medical School. He moved to Cambridge in 2020 after living in California, Ohio and Tennessee. He emigrated from Taiwan at 12.
Housing: “One of the obstacles we face is the mentality of ’not in my backyard’ … I think we have the skillset to communicate with folks about this ’not in my backyard’ type of behavior, and we can try to push at least minimizing or eliminating exclusionary zoning.”
Climate policy: “Reducing carbon footprint will be one of my top priorities if elected. We can and should make Cambridge greener. This is not easy, but with measured and creative planning, we can improve tree canopy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Road infrastructure: “There’s a lot of work to be done. I think communication among stakeholders is going to be important … Discussing and collaborating with businesses to incentivize and promote more MBTA presence for Cantabrigian will also be important.”
Pet project: As a physician and master of public health degree holder, Hsu is especially interested in health policy and public health education.
Participatory budgeting:
I would love to see $1 million be directed toward expanding mental health outreach and access to high-quality health care to more folks in Cambridge, especially kids, teens, youth, adolescents, young adults, older folks and folks from lower socioeconomic classes.
Favorite place: Along the Charles River, which I bike next to every day to and from work.
A stronger
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