CRT 2016 #33 · Agenda item attachment · Aug 1 2016

Atlachment A. Opening Remarks For May 31, 2016 Housing Committee Meeting Sullivan Chamber at 6 pm The Housing Committee will conduct a public hearing to continue discussion regarding the recently completed Inclusionary Housing Study with community feedback from the May 18, 2016 hearing being shared and discussed with consultant David Paul Rosen & Associates. This hearing to be videotaped. Good Evening, Tonight, the Housing Committee is holding the second of at least three meetings to discuss the recently-completed Inclusionary Zoning Study, which was undertaken by David Paul Rosen & Associates. The full 101-page report from this consultant is available on the City's website, and tonight's meeting is designed to allow Nora Lake Brown, on behalf of the team that conducted this study, to answer questions that were posed by members of the community at the meeting this committee held on May 18. I am going to ask Ms. Lake Brown to speak after allowing members of the Community Development Department to share any opening thoughts they may wish to share with us. Then I will open the floor to public comment, and following that, I will ask if any of my colleagues on the Housing Committee wish to speak. As I stated at the May 18th hearing, it is important that we underscore the importance of why this study was commissioned - and the short explanation for this is the following: Cambridge is facing an extraordinary crisis in affordable housing. We are seeing far, far too many longtime Cambridge residents being squeezed out of our community due to soaring rents, and far too many truly-deserving people are scrambling for far too few truly affordable units. By increasing the amount of Inclusionary Zoning units, our hope is that we can ease some of the housing crunch, we can help more people stay in units that are truly affordable, and we can take some of the intensity out of this situation. Tonight's hearing is not meant to be exhaustive, and I assure you that this will not be our last opportunity to discuss this matter in this committee. My office and the City Clerk are working to establish the date of the next Housing Committee meeting, which we hope will be taking place in June. Please feel free to call my office next week, keep a watch on the City's calendar of upcoming hearings, or follow my Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates on this. I want to again stress that nothing will get decided or voted upon this evening, and we should not have the expectation that all of our questions will be answered in tonight's hearing. This is just the second meeting, we are actively looking to schedule the follow up, and there are going to be multiple opportunities to ask questions, provide feedback, and get additional clarification in the weeks ahead. I also want to note that this meeting is being recorded and televised, and that my Chief of Staff, Neal Alpert, will be taking the meeting minutes in lieu of the staff from the City Clerk's Office, who were unavailable. I will now turn the floor over to my Co-Chair, Vice Mayor McGovern, to see if he has any opening thoughts, then I will cede the floor to the Community Development Department, and then to Ms. Lake Brown. Mr. Vice Mayor?