That the Housing Committee will be convened to discuss the concrete details of social housing; that the City Manager be and hereby is requested to confer with the Community Development Department, Finance Department, Law Department, and other relevant departments to explore all steps towards advancing social housing in Cambridge

O-2 FIRST IN COUNCIL September 29, 2025 City of Cambridge COUNCILLOR SOBRINHO-WHEELER VICE MAYOR MCGOVERN COUNCILLOR SIDDIQUI COUNCILLOR WILSON WHEREAS: There is an affordability crisis in Cambridge, especially for low-income residents, where over 70% of Cambridge households below 50% AMI are rent-burdened according to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)’s most recent Housing Needs Assessment; and WHEREAS: Over the last three decades, tens of thousands of people had to leave Cambridge, largely because of the high cost of housing, reducing the economic, racial, and ethnic diversity of long-term residents of the city; and WHEREAS: Cambridge has made significant efforts on housing affordability and the creation of new affordable and market rate housing over the last several years, including with the Affordable Housing Overlay, the increase to the City’s Affordable Housing Linkage Fee, a municipal housing voucher program, and the Multi-Family Housing Ordinance; and WHEREAS: New market-rate housing construction alone is not sufficient to address this crisis for low and moderate-income families, and a commensurate dramatic increase in the construction of affordable housing is also needed; and WHEREAS: Major European cities have addressed their housing needs for the past century through substantial construction of “social housing”; and WHEREAS: Social housing means mixed-income, government-owned or -controlled rental housing in which at least 40% of the units are affordable to households below 80% AMI, a significant portion of which are reserved for low-income households below 30% AMI; in which affordability is achieved through cross-subsidization from the higher income units and low-interest capital from government funding; and in which community and tenant control are maintained; and WHEREAS: Social housing’s financial success is achieved through low-interest loans and higher- income rents cross-subsidizing the lower-income units, allowing loan repayment and the recycling of funds in excess of costs to invest in the next project; and WHEREAS: Tenant control means that residents have democratic control of the housing they live in, and community control means that the board overseeing the developer of social housing is composed of the community served by the housing, possibly in a manner similar to Seattle’s social housing ordinance, where a 13-person social housing board is composed of a majority of renters with lived experience of housing insecurity; and

WHEREAS: Many cities and states in the United States, including Maryland, Rhode Island, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston, have initiated efforts to establish social housing, including creating social housing development agencies, capitalizing hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds towards social housing, and passing dedicated tax revenue for social housing; and WHEREAS: Boston established the Boston Acquisition Fund, a revolving loan fund providing low- interest debt for affordable housing; Massachusetts seeded $50 million in the Momentum Fund, a revolving loan fund to support the development of mixed-income housing; and Massachusetts passed a social housing pilot as part of its $275 million Sustainable and Green Initiatives line item in the most recent Housing Bond bill; now therefore be it ORDERED: That the Housing Committee will be convened to discuss the concrete details of social housing, including but not limited to the affordability and composition of a social housing portfolio; mechanisms of funding social housing, including the establishment of a revolving loan fund, use of bonding capacity, and dedicated funding sources from the operating budget; who will develop social housing in Cambridge; and how social housing will achieve democratic governance in its buildings; and be it further ORDERED: That the City Manager be and hereby is requested to confer with the Community Development Department, Finance Department, Law Department, and other relevant departments to explore all steps towards advancing social housing in Cambridge, including but not limited to: (a) creating a revolving loan fund to support the development of social housing, (b) identifying a preferred public or quasi-public developer of social housing in Cambridge, either an existing agency/agencies or the establishment of a new one; (c) identifying possible dedicated funding mechanisms based on the models of other cities, including Seattle’s compensation tax and Chicago’s municipal bond issuance; (d) establishing preferential zoning for social housing; and be it further ORDERED: That the City Manager be and hereby is requested to report back to the City Council before January 2026.