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After Cambridge passed landmark zoning reform earlier this year, Cambridge City Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui and A Better Cambridge co-chair Justin N. Saif ’99 unpacked its implications and encouraged students to get involved in local politics at a Phillips Brooks House Association event on Tuesday.
“National politics, obviously, is the dumpster fire, but you can have a huge impact on the local level,” Saif said.
Siddiqui and Saif hosted the discussion through the PBHA’s annual Housing Awareness Month. This week’s theme was on exclusionary zoning and tenant rights.
The conversation followed the passage of a contentious upzoning plan designed to combat Cambridge’s affordable housing crisis. The legislation, passed this past February, ends single family zoning citywide in an effort to promote multifamily developments.
Saif also discussed the role that ABC has played in recent local elections, casting the organization as an effective advocate for solving affordable housing shortages in Cambridge.
“The past four elections, six of our nine endorsers were elected,” Saif said.
“We campaigned, we had a sixth councilor elected, and that enabled the passage of the Affordable Housing overlay, and 500 affordable homes are coming to Cambridge,” Saif said. “That wouldn’t be if we hadn’t done that. There’s a chance to make actual progress on all of these things.”
Siddiqui — the former Mayor of Cambridge — noted the long-term increase in Cambridge’s affordable housing, directly attributing the increase to the elimination of single-family zoning in the city.
“The restrictive zoning was saying that you would only get about 350 units in the next 10 years,” Siddiqui said. “With this new zoning, what was estimated is that this could result in about 3600 net new units by 2040 — and of those 660 would be inclusionary.”
Saif said that the city’s affordable housing legislation can serve as a blueprint for other cities, which have yet to enact sweeping changes to their zoning laws.
“Cambridge often sets a high standard that other towns follow. Boston has the watered down version of the affordable housing overlay,” Saif said. “We’re hopeful that other towns will follow with the end of exclusionary zoning and allowing multi families city wide.”
More than a dozen students attended Tuesday’s event — including Cody A. Vasquez ’25, the incoming staff director at Y2Y Harvard Square, a student-run overnight shelter.
“It’s also really promising to think about all the other cities around here that are also doing similar things that hopefully can increase housing supply,” Vasquez said.
Despite the advances in zoning policy, Cambridge has often struggled to compromise with stakeholders to advance their housing goals.
“We’ve tied ourselves up in knots, trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Saif said.
Following the elimination of single-family zoning, Siddiqui called on the city council to take a “multifaceted” approach to encourage affordable housing growth in Cambridge.
“Obviously, the goal is for there to be more housing being built, but we’re also changing certain rules that exist in zoning that also make it harder,” Siddiqui said.
“It’s not just taking the headline and saying, ‘We’ve ended single family zoning’ — it’s a headline,” she added. “It’s going beyond, it's removing all some of these other requirements.”
—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com.
