Zine tells story of rent-burdened South Asians

Camberville South Asian Leadership Training (C-SALT) members released a zine featuring stories about rent burdens facing their community  at the Cambridge Community Center last Saturday.

The zine, a digital publication, reflected data gathered during seven months of canvassing by C-SALT. It was meant to draw attention to the economic burden rent is creating for South Asians in Cambridge, particularly working-class tenants. Notably, 64% of surveyed South Asian renters were cost-burdened, with Afghan and Bengali families the most vulnerable.

The event was part of a broader strategy to influence housing policy led by Homes for All, a coalition including C-SALT’s parent organization, the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW). Asian American Pacific Islander Data, an independent policy organization, found that overall, 30% of Asians in Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge, were rent-burdened.

“It’s important to have housing policy that is connected and rooted in the experiences of the most marginalized folks within the pan-Asian identity and the South Asian identity,” said Kavya Crasta, C-SALT founder and longtime Cambridge resident, who is originally from South India.

Crasta describes a responsibility “more privileged identities within the Asian diaspora,” such as “class-privileged,” “Hindu,” and “caste-privileged” folks, have in advocating for housing justice.

“We don’t talk about social justice in Pan-Asian, South Asian, immigrant communities [in my experience],” said Vick Mohanka, Massachusetts director of the Sierra Club, who was also interviewed for the project.

The canvassing happened primarily at the Rindge Towers, a North Cambridge public housing complex home to a large Gujarati and Bengali community, and Foodland, an Indian grocery in North Cambridge. Members of the C-SALT cohort canvassed in various languages, such as Bengali. “It felt really special to … have these conversations about rent control in our native languages,” said Crasta.

“There’s a lot of focus on really privileged aspects of the [South Asian] community,” says Uma Venkatraman, a Roslindale-based board member of AARW. She adds that by including young and working-class voices, the project “cuts at the narrative that we’re just a monolith.”

The return of rent control

Rent control may return to the ballot this fall, thanks to a campaign that saw a stunning 124,000 signatures collected and certified, 50,000 more than needed. Now the 2026 ballot initiative faces a vote which, if not passed by Legislature by May, will require an additional 12,000 signatures for certification in July before officially becoming a ballot question. The bill to lift the ban on rent control was proposed by Cambridge representative Mike Connolly and a dozen other legislators, including several who represent Cambridge and Somerville: Patricia Jehlen, Steve Owens, Erika Uyterhoeven, Christine Barber, and Sal DiDomenico.

C-SALT’s project “puts the South Asian experience into the rent control campaign” and “communicates [our] love for the neighborhood,” said Venkatraman.

“The photos were places where we frequent, spaces that we live in, and is what represents as South Asian folks in Cambridge,” Crasta said. “It very much feels like a love letter [to Cambridge].”

In the zine, a long-time Cambridge resident originally from Nepal described South Asian residents wanting to return to “the city that they were born [and] raised [in], but they just couldn’t afford coming [back].” A Bengali elder living in the Rindge Towers described Cambridge as “affordable, maybe 30 years ago … when rent control was there, the tenants had rights.”

A former Port Landing Cambridge Housing Authority complex resident, who asked not to be named, described neighboring multi-family units as paying “historic high” rent, from “$3,000 to even upwards of $5,000.”

“Many of my neighbors in housing are also of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indo-Caribbean diasporic descent,” she said via messaging app, due to “generational wealth gaps and a lack of opportunity back home.” In her time living in subsidized housing, she’s witnessed disorganized rent recertification processes, delays in filling work orders, “arbitrary eviction notices,” and “very bad” mouse infestations.

Rent hikes can trigger exhausting cycles of displacement many renters dread said people interviewed for the project and an attendee at the event. Mohanka, who lives by Central Square, has moved five times in less than 10 years. “Whether I move or not, the rent keeps going up and up,” Mohanka said.

The former CHA tenant messaged that “I would really like rent control to be a possibility in Cambridge, especially for my aging mother who would like to retire and has been working overtime to pay the rent. It would be a huge support to my family and community.”

A queer Cambridge resident from Pakistan has lived in more than five places in five years due to the increasing rent and describes moving as “hectic and stressful” partly due to accumulated belongings over the years.

At the end of the event, participants at eight pastiche stations snipped and pasted magazine pages onto easel papers, imagining their “dream housing,” “housing justice,” and what community looked like to them. Collages will be incorporated into the final zine, available in physical and digital form.

Mohanka’s ideal housing would involve fewer rent increases, creating more stability in his life. That’s what renters hope rent control could provide in Cambridge, Somerville, and throughout the state. “We’re all renters because the increase in rent is so much,” Mohanka said. “Where’s the limit on that?”

He also said the city should perform a comprehensive community land overview. “How many people have second homes in Cambridge? How many homes are empty year-round? Six months out of the year? How many eight-person homes exist that only two people use?” Mohanka asked.

Some participants in the event came away feeling empowered. “We [the South Asian community] can build power and be explicitly involved in political issues and in organizing,” Venkatraman said.

A stronger

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