Louise Venden knows a thing or two about hands-on experience. From driving cabs and waiting tables to working in real estate finance and even running a Beacon Hill inn, she hopes to bring the practical, fix-it-yourself approach that’s helped her throughout her career onto Cambridge City Council.
“I’m a solution-oriented person,” she said. “You can’t imagine what I can do with duct tape.”
Venden was inspired to join the race relatively late in the cycle after penning a letter to the editor of the Cambridge Day that resonated with many Cantabrigians frustrated about the lack of data and tracking of progress made publicly available following zoning reforms. The letter caught the attention of Suzanne Preston Blier, president of Cambridge Citizens Coalition, one of two Cambridge Super PACs organized around the issue of housing. (CCC raises concerns about the impacts of rapid large-scale development, while A Better Cambridge (ABC) advocates for rapidly creating new housing to combat the affordability crisis.) Venden was encouraged to enter the race, but attempting to file as a candidate on the day of the deadline led to her being unable to get on the ballot after a paperwork error was discovered.
Undeterred, Venden is running as a write-in candidate with CCC’s backing.
A key concern of Venden’s is making sure that policies like the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) follow through on their goals. On her website, she notes that only 62 new affordable homes have been completed since the overlay was established in 2020. (Although she did note that hundreds more units are currently in development.)
“[City Council] adopted these wonderful laws, but the problem is they haven’t made sure they worked,” Venden said. “Laws don’t build housing.”
Some of Venden’s campaign ideas are informed by her work in several different municipal roles while living in Provincetown from 2013-2023, during which she served as library board trustee, a finance committee member, and as a select board member. One unique idea is for a market rate housing trust, inspired by a similar law in Provincetown, to help middle-income families who are also being squeezed by the affordability crisis in Cambridge but would otherwise not qualify for assistance. Venden specified that this would not replace the current affordable housing trust but would be its own separate entity.
“There are thousands of people who have to leave here every year, who don’t really want to leave. And many of them are essential to our community in the longer term,” Venden said, noting that people of color and households that make less than $150,000 per year have been more likely to be priced out. “We’ve got to put money into a developer who will not just [provide] affordable but middle-income housing to keep people here who will be a part of this future.”
The current city council voted 8-1 for city-wide upzoning that allows developers to create four stories of housing by right or up to six stories for inclusive projects almost anywhere in the city. Venden worries, given the high costs of construction, that this will lead to more high-cost units at the expense of design standards.
“We have to be thoughtful and rational about this. You can’t preserve everything exactly as it was, but there do need to be design standards, and there does need to be some community input,” Venden said. “The policies [City Council] has aren’t working. So why? Why move further and open up the floodgates?”
Another thing Venden would like to do if elected is create a city civil service that is more responsive to information requests from residents, citing difficulty and delays in receiving housing data requests. She also thinks that City Council could use dedicated budget staff given rising concerns about decreasing revenues.
“I’m running because I want Cambridge to deploy its amazing resources, both human resources and money, in ways that really serve the public’s interest,” she said. “But the financial gate is closing.”
As a write-in candidate, Venden has an uphill battle. Given Cambridge’s ranked-choice system and the relatively low turnout in Cambridge’s municipal elections, though, her election is not an impossibility if enough voters know her name and rank her high on their ballots. While Venden herself is endorsed by CCC, she has no qualms voting for candidates on ABC’s slate.
“I’m going to be ranking Sumbul Siddiqui, because she is effective. She’s a good guy,” Venden said. She said she would also be voting for Stanislav Rivkin, who did not seek or accept endorsement from either ABC or CCC.
Venden hopes that this election will result in a City Council that works together more effectively and ignores the in-fighting between the two housing factions.
“I don’t like the hostility and the overreaching and the name calling that goes on,” she said. “Are we in Washington, D.C. now? I mean, we’re supposed to be people who are respectful, the people who want to collaborate and come up with solutions.”
A stronger
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