The Rent is Still Too High!

I moved to Cambridge in 2021 and immediately fell in love with the city. 

Luckily, I found stable housing on a gamble--signing onto my housemates' lease before seeing the building, lest we lose out to the twenty rival applicants for that unit. My housing story had a happy ending, but many neighbors aren’t so lucky. They live in fear, often one rent increase away from losing their home, forced to leave this great city. Countless others never arrive, priced out as surely as if there had been a wall.

Why do we let these walls rise when we should be tearing them down?  

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The housing crisis is multifaceted and began before many Cantabrigians were born.  One-off solutions won't solve it. Together, we can make incremental, meaningful change every year, ever election cycle, every City Council term.  And we have!  The Affordable Housing Overlay, the Affordable Housing Trust, the Housing Authority, and, most recently, the multifamily upzoning, are all evidence that we can pass laws and enact programs to fight the housing shortage and affordability crisis.  

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Our work is still very much cut out for us.  We need to defend our accomplishments and push forward to actually get the results we want and need.  There are challenges and roadblocks--whether macroeconomic (interest rates, construction costs), or local (slow permitting, endless lawsuits)--that still stand in the way of affordability.  As a city councilor, I would understand what's in our control and what's not--and that we must do everything in our power to make Cambridge the welcoming beacon of a city it can be.

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 --Ned Melanson   

(617) 453-8590