The Cambridge Housing Authority will contest an order from federal housing officials that could result in sharp increases in rents for 42 families with some immigrant members who lack required documents, executive director Michael Johnston has told city councillors.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had instructed CHA and other housing authorities with special status that enabled them to disregard some of its rules to now follow a formula for calculating rents for “mixed families” who have at least one U.S. citizen or immigrant with permanent status such as a green card.
Other foreign-born tenants may be here legally but are considered “ineligible” to live in public housing or hold federal rent vouchers because they have temporary student or work visas or other temporary status; immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program are also ineligible.
The housing authority has been adding a 10 percent surcharge to rents for mixed families instead of using HUD’s formula that prorates the rent according to the number of “eligible” family members. Depending on the split between eligible and ineligible family members, mixed families could face big rent increases under the formula, Johnston has said.
He emailed councillors Sunday saying that “we have already formulated several arguments against this action, we are working with our national industry groups to fight this and, if our efforts end up failing, we are already formulating a potential work-around that would allow our 42 mixed families to remain housed with deeply affordable rents.”
HUD agreed March 24 to let the Department of Homeland Security, which houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement, get access to its records on immigrants in housing programs. The data includes addresses, ages, immigration status, employment, ethnicity and more.
Johnston’s email to councillors said the authority intends to notify mixed families of both actions by HUD this week, “to explain to them what is happening and to link them to assistance and services.”
“While we cannot just erase data from HUD’s software, we can and will work with others to prevent HUD from using this data in ways that it was never intended,” Johnston said. “I suspect that there will be various discussions among the industry groups on this over the coming weeks, and I strongly hope that there will be a suit filed by immigration-rights advocates that would have direct ties to some of those mixed families and thus have legal standing to sue.”
Countering “unlawful federal action”
The city of Cambridge has also taken a concrete step to resist the Trump administration’s actions on immigrants.The city has joined with 11 other cities in a lawsuit “to challenge the cancellation of temporary protected status for over 600,000 Venezuelans, which would have subjected them to possible imminent deportation as of April 7,” city manager Yi-An Huang said at the Monday council meeting.
He said the judge hearing the suit had granted a motion to postpone the status revocation. “This is just one step in one case, but with the council’s support, we will continue to act where it’s appropriate, to challenge this administration’s actions in court,” Huang said.
He condemned the Thursday arrest of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student from Turkey who was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents near her Somerville home and flown to New Hampshire, Vermont and then Louisiana, arriving there in about 20 hours. Unbeknownst to her lawyer, Ice had moved her to New Hampshire before the attorney asked a Massachusetts court to block her departure from the state. A judge has ordered the government not to deport her without a court order.
“We’re having a national debate about immigration, but this action shows an unprecedented disinterest in constitutional protections, rule of law and freedom of speech,” Huang said. He said residents were asking what more the city could do to counter “unlawful federal action.”
“There are significant limitations to municipal powers over regulating or restricting federal actions with a lengthy set of case law that has established the concept of federal supremacy,” Huang said, “but we will be exploring possible options with our Law Department, working with other cities who have similar concerns and reaching out to our state partners to understand what actions we can take to provide greater oversight and assurance that federal agencies that are operating within the boundaries of our city are also operating within the boundaries of the constitution, and that our community can trust that their rights and safety are being protected.”
Cuts could affect state health work
In another example of how Trump administration actions could affect Cambridge, the Cambridge Public Health Department could feel impacts from federal cuts to the state’s Department of Public Health, which provides vital services to local health departments, including a state vaccination registry and the state laboratory.
“At this point, we are waiting to see how these cuts are implemented and what the impact on the ground will actually be,” Cambridge Public Health Department spokesperson Dawn Baxter said. “We are concerned, of course, about this attack on the public health infrastructure, but remain committed to our mission of protecting the health of the Cambridge community.”
The department has “minimal direct reliance on federal grants. That said, we do rely heavily on our partnership” with the state for services, Baxter said. “Once we have a better sense of the landscape, CPHD will deploy our resources accordingly.”
A statement from chief public health officer Derrick Neal said the department had shown during the Covid-19 pandemic that its staff “can be creative and impactful in responding to changing circumstances. Although this clearly is a different type of challenge, we will always work to maximize the level of service we provide to the community.” Huang said the city is also talking to the public health department about the impact of the cuts.
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