Absolutely! We should end apartment bans! This restrictive style of zoning unnecessarily limits access to homes; even without changing our built environment, we could potentially see thousands of new homes become available. The Affordable Housing Overlay does this for 100% affordable projects, and we should eliminate apartment bans citywide, creating new zoning that re-legalizes the style of housing we already allow in our city.

Absolutely! The Affordable Housing Overlay provides a great opportunity to create zoning to build 100% affordable housing on some city-owned parking lots. Under the overlay, these projects could proceed more quickly, and with fewer needs to pursue difficult or costly zoning changes; and could create more affordable units on city-owned property as a result. This would establish an opportunity to create hundreds of units in Central Square alone now that the overlay has passed. This is an excellent idea that the overlay will support!

Currently, many universities do not have housing to support all their students, especially graduate students. However, because of the restrictions in Cambridge zoning, it is difficult for them to create the high-density housing that is needed to house those students. We should explore creating zoning that would open the door for universities to build more housing in the City!

Cambridge's commercial corridors, especially areas along Massachusetts Avenue, are a great place for us to invest in creating more housing and retail space, and the Affordable Housing Overlay addresses this by allowing greater density along those corridors. We should make thoughtful changes to allow building along corridors for market rate housing as well, especially in order to provide a greater number of inclusionary units and provide for greater retail opportunities!

Publicly owned housing gives the maximum amount of control over housing stock directly to the public. When looking at options to expand affordable housing, public ownership can be a focus. However, any building still has to follow zoning laws in creating new homes. The Affordable Housing Overlay density bonuses make City-owned affordable housing developments more economically feasible and helps make more homes available for low-income households.

Tenant protections like just cause eviction protections, counsel for tenant disputes or eviction proceedings, and right of first refusal requirements are common sense measures that should be implemented. This is something we must work on in parallel to improving zoning! (This is primarily an area where the state legislature has the relevant authority.) The State Legislature should move as quickly as possible to provide additional tenant protections to area residents!

It is impossible for Cambridge to solve our region-wide housing emergency on its own. In order to solve it, we will need to work across the region and the state to improve transportation, remove restrictive zoning, and increase production region-wide -- but Cambridge has limited control in those decisions. The State Legislature should move as quickly as possible to take steps to address our region-wide crisis!

Cambridge has recently increased its funding of affordable housing significantly, and we should be willing to spend more! Unfortunately, no amount of money can fix our fundamental problems with zoning. It is impossible to solve our housing crisis without changing the zoning of the parcels we build on, no matter how much money we spend, because today's zoning is just too restrictive. We need to make more space in our city for new homes.

When corporations build commercial property in Cambridge, they are required to pay a "linkage fee": a fixed fee per square foot that funds the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust. Once corporations own property in Cambridge -- whether it as a landlord or a direct owner -- those corporations pay property taxes. Rather than letting corporations decide who to house, and how to house them, we should increase property tax rates and commercial linkage fees, and have the City invest that money as a public investment in housing!

In the midst of our ongoing housing crisis, solving the home ownership dilemma for low income families is incredibly difficult. To bring prices of homes available in the area to the types of prices that would be affordable for low income families would require a subsidy of hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit -- more than simply creating a new unit. Given the current reality, it is better for the city to invest in permanently deed-restricted units that act as a public resource outside the commoditized housing market for the long term.

Inclusionary units are a valuable tool for expanding the affordable housing stock available in a City, but they can not be our only tool for providing low-income families housing, because they leave out many classes of people. Whether it is no-income earners, or other residents who fail to meet the criteria, inclusionary units serve a more narrow range of residents, and can not be used as the only solution to our affordable housing needs. They must be included in our thinking, but not our only thinking.