Affordable housing ideas abound at Cambridge candidates forum

Candidates for the Cambridge City Council filled a nearly two-hour forum with ideas for creating affordable housing in the city. Finding consensus on those ideas might be more of a challenge.

The forum on Sept. 10, hosted by A Better Cambridge, one of the city’s independent-expenditure political action committees, or Super PACs, featured most of the candidates for City Council. Mayor E. Denise Simmons was absent for most of the forum due to a situation in which a local family was confronted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The event moderator asked each candidate a set of questions based on their responses to an online questionnaire from ABC.

ABC has endorsed eight candidates: incumbents Burhan Azeem, vice mayor Marc McGovern, Sumbul Siddiqui, mayor E. Denise Simmons, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Ayesha Wilson, as well as challengers Dana Bullister and Ned Melanson.

Social housing, a form of public housing with market elements, was discussed by several candidates. First-time candidate Ned Melanson pointed to Chicago’s green social housing ordinance as a model for Cambridge. Chicago’s city council in May approved a $135 million bond issue to invest in affordable, mixed-income and sustainable housing. Melanson said Cambridge could tie such housing to more sustainable transit than automobiles. He acknowledged that social housing was only part of the answer for creating affordable housing in Cambridge. “At the end of the day, it’s just another tool in the tool kit,” he said.

Chicago is the largest city in the United States to adopt social housing, which also exists in Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sobrinho-Wheeler said Cambridge “should be thinking about exploring it,” and could pay for such a measure by using its affordable housing trust. “It’s a super common model in Europe,” he added, but uncommon in the United States, though he mentioned Maryland’s Montgomery County as an example. He thinks Cambridge could be a city that jump-starts social housing, in particular because the state Legislature has passed a bill that could support the concept championed by Rep. Mike Connolly, who represents East Cambridge and East Somerville. “We should be thinking about exploring” social housing, Sobrinho-Wheeler said.

McGovern said he has been working with the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition to explore how the city could leverage its bond rating to create social housing. “To get shovels in the ground, we need to get these proposals in. We need to make some decisions. We’re going to need to make zoning changes.”

Other multifamily ideas

Challenger Zion Sherin aims to offer incentives for the city’s historic homes to be converted into co-ops and to use the city’s AAA bond rating to secure loans, enabling nonprofits to build affordable multifamily units. But he stressed that these units would need to adhere to by-right development, which grants developers faster approval for following building codes and zoning rules.

Inclusionary housing, below-market-rate housing that prioritizes giving units to people in professions such as teaching, law enforcement, social work and nursing, was put forth by Peter Hsu, a returning challenger for the council. When asked how he would determine which occupations would qualify for priority, Hsu didn’t provide a concrete answer. He also didn’t explain further how he would craft a legal city program to achieve this goal.

Azeem believes Cambridge can develop more inclusionary housing by levying taxes. He referred to places such as Jersey City, New Jersey, and Somerville, which have levied taxes and fees to build this type of below-market rate housing.

Central Square rezoning

Creating zoning that would allow substantial multiunit buildings on city-owned lots in Central Square was advanced by several candidates. McGovern said if the city built housing units on these lots, he’d prefer those sites be fully affordable. He said, though, the city would have to look closely at private development if a mix of market-rate and affordable units created more affordable units overall.

The idea of 18-story buildings in Central Square was one Wilson said she wasn’t “100 percent sure” about. She’d like more community input on development before moving forward.

Siddiqui said the city needs to “really think about funding” development of those Central Square lots. The city should be working with developers on how we can help them build feasibly, she said.

The lone voice against multifamily development in the city’s core was Zusy, who was also the only councillor to vote against multifamily housing reform. She said she voted against the measure because it would’ve incentivized development within parts of the city that are outside recommendations in Envision Cambridge, a wide-ranging plan for the city to achieve several goals by 2030. The plan called for more development of units along the city’s major traffic corridors, in its squares and in the transitional districts between squares and residential neighborhoods.

“There are different ways to build more housing than a multifamily ordinance,” she said.

Tenant protections

Several candidates focused on better conditions for Cambridge’s substantial rental community. Ayah Al-Zubi, who is making another bid for a council seat, is pushing for more proposals that would protect tenants, including rent control and emergency assistance for renters struggling with addiction.

For Al-Zubi, the issue is personal – she said she has moved at least five times in the seven years that she has lived in the city due to rising rents, bad landlords or both. Last year, Al-Zubi said her landlord didn’t provide her building with heating or cooling.

“My story is not a unique story,” she said. “There are other people who are living in situations where they feel like they are not heard, and their landlords are taking advantage of that.”

She also supports building more social housing for people with low and middle incomes, and would like the city to develop a new homeless shelter.

Bullister shared several ideas on ways to lower the cost of rent, including giving renters more negotiating power.

“I think that policy and zoning are all about giving people choices and opening doors to the possibility that they can live affordably, they can live sustainably if they want, and not force them to live in a giant place if they really don’t want to,” she said.

Just what’s affordable?

Councillor Patty Nolan said people need an adequate income to afford housing costs, and what was needed was “a living wage for … the people overall.” Nolan said she would call on the city council to reexamine its job-training program to ensure it is working effectively.

Challenger Stanislav Rivkin called on the city to create “deeply” affordable housing. These are buildings that offer units to people earning below 50 percent of the area’s median income – about $56,300 in Cambridge. He said a mix of social housing, community land trusts and housing vouchers might make that possible.

In her questionnaire, write-in candidate Louise Venden said that her priorities for square and corridor rezoning are to identify the ones that are most likely to attract affordable- and middle-market-rate developers. To do so, she said, “What we need to do is figure out what people need, and then figure out where those most likely places are to provide the amenities and conveniences, the transportation, the infrastructure, including water and sewer, and all of those things, and open space.”

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