Cambridge is often called a progressive city โ but for many residents, that is not the reality.
This year, Cambridge voters can elect a City Council that would take major steps to bring progressive changes to meet the needs of residents facing the biggest economic and social challenges.
The next council could address the housing needs of low- and moderate-income residents. It can protect tenants from skyrocketing rent increases and no-fault evictions. It can request that the state Legislature allow us to enact rent control. It can fund housing vouchers beyond the current one-year limit. It can support new, proven strategies to create more homes, such as social housing and the Cambridge Community Land Trust. It can take steps to reduce homelessness. The city should support tenant organizers and their organizations and protect them from retaliation. We could elect councillors who do not accept contributions from developers.
Three years ago, our council took action to promote nonpolice responses to emergency situations in which violence is not expected. Police continue to respond to many of these calls. The next council should ensure that our nonpolice emergency response systems, including Cambridge Heart, are given the role the council envisioned for them.
The Cambridge Police Department uses automated police surveillance, including ShotSpotter, whose microphones record conversations continuously in the two Cambridge neighborhoods whose residents face the greatest social and economic challenges but have never helped to get anyone convicted. The police budget continues to rise at a rate exceeding in๏ฌation. The department has military style equipment, including an armored vehicle. The next council should eliminate ShotSpotter and similar surveillance equipment and end hyperinflationary increases in the CPD budget.
The current council took significant steps to reduce fossil fuel use in commercial buildings but stopped short of making similar steps to regulate fossil fuel use in large multifamily buildings.
With the Trump administration encouraging the use of fossil fuels, it is necessary for the next council to join other cities and towns and step up our efforts to limit climate change.
The next School Committee must actively defend and protect public education, students and educators from the multipronged assault by the Trump administration. They must prioritize the elimination of academic disparities by race, class, ability and language by using the concrete recommendations from the recently completed Thrive! budget equity audit. They must include our educators in priority-setting and decision-making, with the common goal of maximizing every studentโs potential at all grade levels, using nonpunitive assessments. They must include and empower families and students to have a voice in their school communities. They must realize their statutory power to research and investigate district proposals and to make the kind of fundamental changes needed for the 21st century.
These are examples of some necessary steps toward a more equitable, inclusive and thriving community. From transportation and climate to education and public health, the opportunity to align Cambridgeโs policies with our values is within reach this November.
With this vision in mind, some of Cambridgeโs leading progressive organizations have come together to form the Cambridge Progressive Electoral Collaboration. It includes eight local member organizations and two allied organizations. Member groups are: the Alliance of Cambridge Tenants, The Black Response Cambridge, Cambridge Democratic Socialists of America, Cambridge Housing Affordability Organizers, Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition, Cambridge Residents Alliance, Our Revolution Cambridge and the Solidarity Squad. Ally organizations include the Cambridge Education Association and Cambridge Retired Educators United.
In the 2025 municipal election, the collaboration will work to elevate the progressive issues that matter most to Cambridge voters, share the positions that candidates take on those issues and encourage a strong turnout. While each member and allied organization will continue to operate independently and make its own decisions, they are united in a shared commitment to pool resources and organize for meaningful change in the leadership and priorities of our local government.
The group invites all council and School Committee candidates running in November to complete our questionnaire, created through a collaborative democratic process involving all member organizations. Candidate responses will be published on CPECโs website and shared widely with the public. Candidates who complete the questionnaire will be invited to participate in candidate forums scheduled for late September.
CPEC itself will not endorse candidates in these elections. Two member organizations โ the Cambridge Residents Alliance and Our Revolution Cambridge โ will use the questionnaire as part of their separate endorsement processes. The remaining groups will use it to inform and empower voters and to help drive an engaged turnout at the polls.
We believe that together a more just, inclusive and equitable Cambridge is not only possible โ itโs within reach. By coming together through this group, we aim to amplify the voices of those too often left out of local decision-making and ensure that our cityโs progressive values are reflected in real, lasting change.
We urge candidates to complete our questionnaires. We encourage residents to read candidatesโ responses on our website and to join the discussion at our public candidates’ forums in late September.
Margaret Ann Brady, Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition; Duane Callender, Alliance of Cambridge Tenants; Virginia A. Fisher, Cambridge Democratic Socialists of America; Stephanie Guirand, The Black Response Cambridge; Richard Krushnic, Cambridge Residents Alliance; Missy Page, Cambridge Solidarity Squad; Ruhee Wadhwania, Cambridge Housing Affordability Organizers; Henry H. Wortis, Our Revolution Cambridge
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What’s the rationale for opposing donations from builders but not landlords?
I’m also not clear on what the writers mean in their few lines about fossil fuel usage in buildings. All new large multi-family construction is required to meet a passive house standard, which precludes the use of fossil fuels
There is so much wrong with this opinion piece, I wouldn’t know where to begin. However, I’ll mention four points.
Cambridge is a very, very dense city. We can build new affordable housing if we replace homes that already exist. We do not need or want to bring in more people. If we do, the increased density will make the city unlivable.
The 8th. paragraph should be one sentence: our only aim is to make sure all our students can read, write, and do math at grade level. As far as non punitive assessments, does that mean you promote each student regardless of that student’s ability to read, write and do math at grade level?
As far as the police department, rather than trying to hinder the department, we should be making sure that it gets everything it needs to stop crime in Cambridge.
With regard to fossil fuels and climate change, first look at city vehicles before you go after anyone else.
Socialism will not make Cambridge a better city. It will put it in disarray.
The number one affordable housing goal of this coalition should be to encourage multifamily zoning with inclusionary homes. That is the only real additional path to significantly increasing the affordable housing stock in Cambridge.
Vouchers and CLTs require a lot of money at a time when a majority of the Council and the Manager only talk of belt tightening. You should put together proposals as to how much that would cost and how you would fund it.
You would need to raise property taxes quite a bit to meaningfully expand vouchers or fund a CLT to buy property and develop subsidized housingโor even to operate donated property as affordable housing.
If you donโt specify these things in advance, you also have no mechanism for accountability for elected Councillors.
If property taxes are raised quite a bit, the economic middle class, like me, will continue to forced out of Cambridge.
Do people want a city that is comprised only of wealthy single family homeowners, condos owned by younger professional people, and those living in affordable housing? That would destroy the fabric of the city.
The density of the city already overpowers it. We have 120,000 citizens. We do not need more people coming to live in Cambridge.
@Old Boy I guarantee you, the middle class is being squeezed out more by the relative lack of housing than by increasing property taxes. We have incredibly low property taxes in Cambridge, especially compared to our median wages here.
For example, my mother in California pays ~5200 a year on property taxes. For the same price home here in Cambridge, she’d be paying 0 in property taxes due to the residential exemption. If your property taxes are 5200 in Cambridge, you live in a $1.3MM home, nearly triple the value of my mom’s home. This is in a city with wages 75% higher than that of my mom’s city.
If you don’t want more people coming to Cambridge, maybe oppose the construction of new labs and office space? They’re the cause of this surge in demand. Of course, you won’t, because the commercial real estate in Cambridge subsidizes our residential property taxes.