Letter from Councillor E. Denise Simmons regarding an "End of Term Report from the Housing Committee"

CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL E. Denise Simmons Mayor City Councillor 2008-2009 2016-2017 December 12, 2019 Anthony Wilson Clerk of Cambridge Cambridge City Hall Re: End of Term Report from Housing Committee Dear Mr. Clerk: Please include this correspondence on the agenda as part of the Communications and Reports from City Officers for the City Council meeting scheduled for December 16, 2019. With the end of the 2018-2019 City Council term upon us, I am writing to summarize the work I have engaged in as Co-Chair of the Housing Committee throughout the course of this term, and I am including recommendations for what I hope the Housing Committee and the City Council will continue to work on in the 2020-2021 City Council term. At the start of this City Council term, when I first became Co-Chair of the Housing Committee along with Councilor Siddiqui, I steered this committee through a series of initial hearings designed to narrow our focus on which policies from the Comprehensive Housing Plan I had presented to the City Council on September 18, 2017 should be explored during the new term. I had worked closely with a number of Affordable Housing experts in drafting that Comprehensive Housing Plan, and perhaps no one figure was more central to creating this document than Cheryl- Ann Pizza-Zeoli. I had the pleasure of working closely with Ms. Pizza-Zeoli on housing issues for many years, and so many of us were devastated when she passed away this past April. Nevertheless, her work lives on in this incredible document that she worked so tirelessly on, which has served as something of a legislative roadmap during this Council term, and which I very much hope the City Council can continue to draw upon going forward. In recent years, the City Council has made undeniable progress in addressing the affordable housing challenges that impact this region. We have raised the linkage fees that developers of commercial buildings must pay into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from $4.58/square foot (which was the rate for more than a decade) up to $15/square foot as of 2018. We doubled the rate (and expanded the scope) of Inclusionary units that must be included in new residential buildings, which now sits at 20 percent of all new buildings of 10 or more units. Together, these two policies are expected to yield millions of new dollars, and hundreds of new affordable units, in the coming years. And yet, the City must take significant additional measures, from a variety of different

approaches, in order to truly make a meaningful impact on the affordable housing crisis that threatens to displace countless longtime residents from our community. One of the items called for in the Comprehensive Housing Plan was the need for the City to devote more funding towards the preservation and creation of affordable units. To that end, in April 2018 Councilor Siddiqui and I sponsored a Policy Order urging the City to commit to spending an additional $100 million over the next five years for the preservation of expiring use affordable units, and the creation of brand new affordable units; this would be in addition to the funds that had already been committed to this use. Increasing this funding would be an important factor in giving the City much greater flexibility in preserving and creating affordable units throughout the community. Another big achievement this term was the establishment of the new Housing Liaison to the City Manager – this executive-level position, which was one of the policy recommendation in the Comprehensive Housing Plan, was created to better serve the tenants living in our Inclusionary units, to strengthen the ties between the City and the various management companies that preside over these buildings, to problem-solve for any issues that Inclusionary tenants may be facing as a result of policy inadequacies, and to review the policies (and suggest improvements to the City Manager) that govern our Inclusionary program. Maura Pensak, who did extraordinary work for many years at the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership (and who played a critical role in helping to find new housing for the over 100 displaced residents of the York Street fire in December 2016), was hired to fill this role and started working in September 2019. Ms. Pensak is a knowledgeable, dynamic new addition to the City’s leadership team and I am excited to see what she will accomplish in the coming years. I very much believe that this new position will go a long way towards improving the already- impressive Inclusionary Housing program that is offered by the City. Without question, the largest legislative venture that the Housing Committee undertook this term was the conceiving, vetting, and deliberating of the proposed citywide Affordable Housing Overlay District. This was an ambitious piece of legislation, which – again – had been a policy recommendation from the Comprehensive Housing Plan, although the discussions around the need for such an overlay date back many, many years. At its core, this legislation had been envisioned as a tool to allow for the relief of certain height and density restrictions for developments that are designated as 100 percent affordable in perpetuity, and it would streamline the process under which such housing could be built. The AHOD, as it was known, would be used in combination with other legislative and planning tools to add upwards of 60-100 brand new affordable units across the city each year, it would create more favorable conditions for developers of affordable housing to competitively acquire land on which to build, it would allow money devoted to creating affordable housing to be stretched further, and it would more evenly and equitably distribute such housing throughout the city. The process, from the initial discussions in the Housing Committee, to the votes asking the Community Development Department to begin conceptualizing and drafting the zoning language, to converting this into legislative language, to educating the members of the Council and the members of the public as to what the legislation would and would not do, to holding numerous Ordinance Committee hearings and Roundtables and moving this to the full City Council for deliberation, spanned around 15 months and encompassed dozens of public meetings. I thank everyone from the affordable housing advocates to the City employees who worked so hard and put countless hours into researching, envisioning, drafting, and answering questions about the proposed legislation. It was a long, difficult, and at times frustrating process as those of us who supported the AHOD had to fight against a fair amount of misinformation that was being circulated about it. I remain convinced that the AHOD would ultimately be an important tool in the City’s continuous efforts to provide greater access to affordable housing for a greater number of our residents. The City Council ultimately chose to table this legislation toward the end of this Council term, but I remain

hopeful that the tremendous amount of hard work and good-faith efforts invested in this process may yet yield some version of the AHOD in the coming years. Another large housing initiative that operated outside the purview of the Housing Committee but that was nonetheless a critical undertaking and worth noting in this letter was the Mayor’s Task Force on Tenant Displacement (for those reading this letter online, that link should take you to the report of this task force), which was led by my Housing Committee Co-Chair, Councilor Siddiqui. Over the course of numerous meetings throughout the past year, Councilor Siddiqui diligently led her sub-committee on an exploration of different practices, policies, and initiatives that could be implemented to prevent tenant displacement and help stabilize the housing for many Cambridge residents. The report has just been released to the Council and the public this month, and I very much hope that the next City Council will carry this important work forward. Councilor Siddiqui and her sub-committee members worked incredibly hard on tackling an issue that impacts tenants all across our community, and we owe them all our gratitude for digging in, doing the work, and coming up with some workable ideas to resolve a complex host of problems. Of course, there were many other policies that the Housing Committee discussed, debated, or suggested that the City consider throughout this term. These policy orders and recommendations often asked the City Manager and his staff to explore addressing the problem of creating greater access to affordable housing, or helping to stabilize existing tenancies, from other angles. Among those policy orders that have been passed by the City Council and that have not yet received a formal response from the City Manager include the following: (From December 12, 2016) ORDERED: That the City Manager is requested to report back to the City Council regarding the potential of building below market rental housing on City- owned parking lots along Bishop Allen Drive. (From December 19, 2016) ORDERED: That the City Manager is requested to confer with the Assistant City Manager for Community Development to determine if people displaced because of events that qualify for Emergency Status and are using a Section 8 voucher in another city or town can retain their resident preference for the purpose of the Inclusionary Housing application (From March 26, 2018) ORDERED: That the City Manager conduct, compile, and publish an inventory of all City- owned vacant buildings and lots with the City's plans for them, if any [plans exist]. (From February 25, 2019) ORDERED: That the City Manager is requested to confer with the Community Development Department on a process for establishing a formal, thorough review of the City’s Affordable Home Ownership programs, incorporating a plan for obtaining and analyzing substantial quantitative data inclusive of all types of units.

(The Comprehensive Housing Plan introduced September 18, 2017) ORDERED: That the Co-Chairs of the Housing Committee are requested to schedule hearings to take up the attached proposed Comprehensive Housing Plan for review and consideration in the near future. These orders look at different aspects of the various housing issues facing our community, and as there likely will be a new composition of the Housing Committee in the ‘20-‘21 City Council term, it will be important that each of these aspects get the full investigation, exploration, and vetting they deserve. There have also been a number of other items raised in the Housing Committee over the past two terms that, while not issued as policy orders, have been discussed throughout our hearings and/or been raised as part of the Comprehensive Housing Plan that I introduced in 2017 that should be considered as this conversation continues into 2020. These items include concepts such as: • Pathways out of Homelessness – The City must be more proactive in creating options for those whose income lifts them just beyond the income brackets for CHA housing, and who could be prime candidates for Inclusionary housing or home ownership programs. • Eligibility for Inclusionary Program – The CDD has been reviewing the criteria for who is given preference for its Inclusionary units, and it is my hope and expectation that this matter shall be discussed, and recommendations shall be made for deliberation and adoption, early in the new year. Among the hoped-for discussions that are related to this topic are: o Discussing the possibility of a revised “local preference” category for those with roots in Cambridge who have been temporarily displaced for a set number of years and are looking to return to the community. o The possibility of a revised category for those who have risen above the income eligibility for CHA housing, and who are now possible candidates for CDD housing or homeownership through CDD programming. o The possibility of a revised eligibility formula for those who are coming from CHA housing who have poor credit scores, but who otherwise have unblemished housing records. o Additionally, there have been repeated concerns raised that those who live in Inclusionary Units are treated differently, and with less civility and respect, than their counterparts who live in the market-rate units. It will be important for the City Council to address this as we move into the new term. • Condo Conversion Fees and Ending Predatory Developers – The Housing Committee was greatly impacted in 2015 by the testimony of those tenants in Harvard Towers and on Harding Street, which highlighted the perils for renters when their affordable buildings are sold out to developers who are uninterested in working with the City to retain affordability. Nearly five years later, it remains imperative that the City deliberate on what actions can be

taken to curb the kind of predatory development and land speculation that has unquestionably hurt countless individuals and torn apart longtime Cambridge neighborhoods. • Quarterly Roundtables With the CHA, HRI, JAS, and other Major Affordable Housing Providers – I have long urged that the City take pains to institutionalize these types of meetings so that there becomes a predictability as to when these meetings will transpire, and so that policies and upcoming projects can be shared amongst each other, challenges can be recognized, and working relationships can be strengthened. If we do this correctly, such meetings will gradually become part of our city’s DNA, long outlasting the people who currently serve in elected office, in the City’s administration, and at the head of the various housing agencies. These information-sharing meetings, held in full view of the public, will ultimately enable us all to be far more effective in the work that we’re undertaking on the public’s behalf. There have been many housing-related challenges discussed during this term, and the Housing Committee has covered a great deal of ground over the past two years. Along with my Co- Chair, Councilor Siddiqui, and the other members of the Housing Committee, I am proud of the work we have undertaken throughout this term. It would be a disservice to the incoming City Council, and to the people we serve, to let any of this work languish or be forgotten about, simply because we have entered a new calendar year. It is my great hope that the next Housing Committee will revisit the work we have undertaken this term and will hit the ground running in picking up the threads and advancing the work further. Whether I am on this committee going forward or not, I will certainly make myself available to the next Housing Committee, and I look forward to continuing the work in my capacity as a City Councilor in the New Year. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Sincerely, __________________________ City Councilor E. Denise Simmons ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139 [phone removed] FAX: [phone removed] TTY/TDD: [phone removed] EMAIL: dsimmons@cambridgema.gov