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John Hanratty spent more than three decades as an entrepreneur in Cambridge’s technology industry. In his second run for City Council, he wants to bring in the “business side” to tackle the city’s biggest issues.
Hanratty, who has founded and led multiple startups, wants to “iterate” on divisive city issues, with a campaign focused on meeting the needs of individual neighborhoods, rather than relying on city-wide ordinances.
If elected, Hanratty plans to counterbalance the current Council’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to the housing crisis and growing lobby for safer bicycle lanes.
“I’m running because I don’t think the Council represents me,” Hanratty said. “I think that they found themselves to consider neighborhoods in the middle class as sort of expendable in their goals of housing, bike lane, parking, and other things.”
Cambridge’s housing policy — including the passing of landmark multifamily zoning reform and incentives for affordable developers — has saturated local political discourse for years. According to Hanratty, the current council is beholden to “special interests”: housing developers and super PACs, which organize support for a slate of endorsed candidates.
“They have an advantage over neighborhoods because the neighborhoods are not organized. They have a playbook, and they execute very well,” Hanratty said, referring to the PACs.
Cambridge’s three super PACs — the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, A Better Cambridge, and Cambridge Bicycle Safety — endorse slates of candidates in each election. While they do not contribute to campaigns directly, the PACs fund promotional materials and encourage members to vote for their slate.
Hanratty is endorsed by the CCC, which has largely opposed the multifamily zoning ordinance.
“Affordable housing? The next question should be, ‘Affordable for whom?’” Hanratty said.
“The middle class is really getting hollowed out in this city — we're building low-income housing, subsidized housing, and the market is building high-priced housing, and we're chomping off those in the middle class,” Hanratty said.
The multifamily zoning ordinance, passed in February, uniformly increases the allowed height and size of new housing developments citywide. Roughly one-third of residential land in Cambridge was zoned for smaller, single-family housing prior to its passing.
The zoning was hotly contested, as residents — many of whom lived in areas where multifamily zoning was not previously allowed — raised concerns that the change would give rise to out-of-scale buildings in their neighborhoods.
“The Council needs to recognize the neighborhoods and their voice and pay more attention to what they’re saying,” Hanratty said. “Right now, what we have is a lot of things are already baked by the time they get to the neighborhood.”
The Council’s approach to bike safety also suffers from an over-generalized approach, similarly failing to consider the needs of individual neighborhoods, according to Hanratty.
The Council passed the Cycling Safety Ordinance in 2019, promising to build a 25-mile network of bike lanes across the city by 2026. But to Hanratty, the Council’s goals are poorly defined.
“The only goal it has is to build 26 miles of bike lanes,” he said. “Doesn’t say it has to be safe. Doesn’t say that we’re trying to increase the number of cyclists.”
Hanratty, if elected, wants to rework the city’s existing solutions to take their success and resident feedback into account.
“Nobody can get it right the first time,” he said. “So let’s measure what we’re doing. Did it do what we wanted it to do? If not, let’s fix it.”
—Staff writer Stephanie Dragoi can be reached at stephanie.dragoi@thecrimson.com.
