“Affordable housing certainly affects a small group of people very strongly, but it doesn’t affect the whole constituency. I’ll concentrate on more general problems like road paving and straightening sidewalks,” he says.

Jens says he would vote against any attempts to reintroduce rent control, eliminated in Cambridge in 1995, as a measure to provide affordable housing, and instead believes that the free market will ease the housing crunch.

“Development and more tall buildings will fix the short supply,” he says, referring to the potential for expansion in the newly zoned North Point neighborhood. “It’s not exactly going to be cheap, but there will be more housing.”

Jens bases his campaign on other issues: more parking, better street maintenance, later MBTA closings, and, of course, more individual freedom.

On the municipal level, his defense of civil liberties takes unusual forms. He says he believes that the licensing and fees required of street performers are an infringement on free speech, and will work to eliminate them.

He says he will leave educational reform to the School Committtee and the state, and has not focused on the environmental and traffic issues that other candidates have highlighted in their campaigns.

—Staff writer Matthew F. Quirk can be reached at quirk@fas.harvard.edu.