Two recent letters to the editor opposing more affordable housing at Walden Square Apartments (June 25, June 28) prompt many questions. Here are a few of them:
- The new homes will be built in the midst of a residential area that now includes subsidized and market-rate housing in everything from single-family structures through multifamily buildings of 40 or more units. How will an additional 100 apartments at Walden Square create what a writer calls “a social disaster, unfair to current residents”?
- One letter describes the proposal as “our very own Cabrini Green,” referring to a Chicago public housing complex built mostly in the 1950s and 1960s that included more than 3,000 units in more than 23 buildings up to 16 stories. How is this similar to Walden Square’s 100 units in two buildings of five to seven stories?
- Why do the writers expect that the property owner will replace the city-vetted design produced by the architect it hired with a different plan from an architect engaged by some Walden Square neighbors who’ve opposed the additional housing for years? Despite the implications in these recent letters, the Planning Board voted unanimously to send a favorable recommendation on the plan to the City Council. The opposing neighbors are now – when the proposal is about at the completion of its approval process – asking the city to make the property owner stop its plan and start over at some other location.
As in many other cities and towns, Cambridge’s laws and approval procedures for building housing have, for decades, prioritized the preferences and pocketbooks of well-off white homeowners over most everyone else. If we allow this to continue in the face of our deep housing shortage, the result will be more displacement and gentrification for many of our neighbors and real social and economic problems for all.
James Zall, Pemberton Street, Cambridge
A stronger
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The opposition to this plan for much-needed housing is fueled by lies, disinformation, and “alternative” proposals designed to block affordable housing, all to protect the interests of the wealthy.
These individuals, who have profited from rising property values, now seek to deny others the same opportunity. Their behavior is reprehensible.