Monthly Archives: May 2013

SUGAR-COATED GENTRIFICATION

Could This Be The End Of Cambridge As We Know It?

Let’s think of them as “misguided.”

If people’s assertions are to be believed—and I’d love to be able to believe our city counselors, city planners and administrators, and even our Central Square Advisory Committee—then all these august civic entities and players are acting exactly opposite to their stated intentions.urban

I’m talking about their oft-stated intention to help preserve and protect Cambridge’s diversity, our unique blending of diverse elements—the middle class and the poor, families, students and singles, all manner of races, ethnicities and age groups—that creates a rich tapestry of community influences and textures.

So why are these well-intentioned parties guilty of being misguided?

Truth is they’ve been unwitting, yet highly willing, accomplices to Cambridge’s homegrown form of gentrification. I call it “Sugar-Coated Gentrification” because the sugar-coating of a small percentage of inclusionary-zoning units, sprinkled very lightly over each development, has become the going price developers pay to build housing for highly paid executives, engineers and technicians. The same executives, engineers and technicians who will easily outbid middle class families and poor people for the city’s available housing stock.

Who are they kidding, if not themselves? This small set-aside of units, usually 11.5%, will never come close to offsetting the loss of middle-class families and economically-disadvantaged residents. We can reasonably argue about the value of inclusionary zoning, but there’s no arguing away the impact of gentrification. We all know the story; we’ve seen it in dozens of cities and hundreds of neighborhoods.

If we can agree that a flood of market-rate housing exerts upward pressures on the price of housing, and the result is a citywide purging of the least-advantaged and most vulnerable members of our community, then we should be able to see the danger inherent when inclusionary housing serves as a gateway to massive development and up-zoning giveaways.

The City Council is currently considering the fact that 11.5% may not be enough to meaningfully impact the city’s loss of affordable housing. The council got away with demanding 18% from MIT for that non-profit’s massive zoning giveaway. So, naturally, they’re considering raising the percentage to 18%, as if that number were the answer to their vague feelings of concern and insufficiency in this matter.

So, in its clumsy accidental way, the City Council has aimed the light in the right direction. They’ve shown the question isn’t whether gentrification will have a negative impact, the question is how negative will it be. Or, as the City Council seems to be asking, “What percentage of inclusionary units will make up for all Cambridge residents ultimately forced out by gentrification?”

But, sorry folks, that’s obviously wrong-headed and counter-productive!

Nobody voted for the city council so they could represent the interests of future Cambridge residents against that of its current residents.

Nor does anyone want the city council to focus on the wellbeing of developers and real estate firms at the expense of those same vulnerable residents.

Speaking of misguided focus, nobody pays the City Manager or his deputies to foster zoning changes that would alter, perhaps harm, the character and rhythm of vibrant yet vulnerable neighborhoods.

And nobody in our city wants to force out current residents to make room for future residents?

If we want to create more affordable housing—and I mean housing less than the $2,400 a month currently deemed affordable for a single bedroom in University Park—we should build it ourselves. Yes, even with all the discouraging funding news coming out of Washington!

We should take that $14 million bribe paid by MIT, and whatever we’ve socked away in the affordable housing trust, and put it to good use, building real, honest affordable housing. There are any number of ways we could fund such housing, if we chose to do it on a small scale. 20 units here, 20 units there; something like that. There’s no need to bring in 16- or 18-story towers to achieve the same results.

It’s time we stopped sugar-coating what are basically acts of self-destructive gentrification.

It’s time we realized inclusionary housing isn’t a solution but a Trojan horse by which developers will undermine the foundation of our community.

It’s also time the City Council called for a Master Plan for all of us in Cambridge to review and discuss.

A plan that takes into account all the impacts from 18+ million square feet of anticipated development over the next 20 years.

A plan that maps out how we’ll approach traffic in the city, which will become even worse and more gridlocked with the addition of 50,000+ car trips a day on our city’s roadways.

A plan that maps out the city’s future.

Better yet, a plan that gives the city a future.

 

 

SURVIVOR CAMBRIDGE PART 2: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast

Episode Two: Sugar-Coated Gentrification

Hello, and welcome back to Survivor Cambridge, the TV show that chronicles the downfall and banana-slip slide of “Life As We Know It” on the island of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both our competing tribes live, work, and fight for survival daily on the streets of Cambridge.

Last week, as you recall, Tribe #2, with its rock-grip hold on the Cambridge City Council, pushed through a mega gift, worth skillions of bucks for the greedy, graspy real estate division of MIT, protestwhich is quickly becoming the Kingpin of Cambridge Real Estate. Theirs is the power to squeeze out everyday homeowners and families by unleashing thousands of graduate students to suck up available local housing; theirs is now the authority to build a tower reaching 25 stories or more, and 2 million square feet of offices, homes and labs, or whatever MIT wants to build.

Just to review, Tribe #1 is made up of the city’s diverse population, with a heavy emphasis on those living near or below poverty levels. Given the quickly rising rents resulting from the area’s rapid gentrification, oddsmakers give Tribe #1 little chance for survival.

Not unless they can Outwit, Outplay and Outlast Tribe #2!

Tribe #2, the odds-on favorite, whose motto is “Build, Baby, Build!” is made up of pro-business folks, some of whom actually live in Cambridge, who are the engines of all this development activity in the city. Tribe #2 wants to continue building housing, office and lab facilities for the engineers and technicians drawn into the city by all the new commercial development; engineers and technicians who will eventually outbid families and poor people for the city’s limited housing.

Tribe #2 is clearly the most dangerous and least likable tribe in today’s show. Its members have grown rich and, what’s worse, increasingly entitled as the value of Cambridge real estate continues to climb. It’s a sad irony that Tribe #2 is attempting to remove zoning restrictions at the same time their real estate holdings have become so valuable the tribe no longer needs up-zoning to access reasonable profits.

Want to see something tragic? Look at things from Tribe #1’s point of view. They’ve arrived at a critical juncture; a moment when their salaries no longer keep pace with inflation, when the cost of college is priced beyond their children’s reach, when assisted housing appears to be a distant memory, and section 8 vouchers are no longer large enough to cover the gap in their monthly rent check. And now, just at this critical moment, along comes a once-in-a-lifetime overheating of the Cambridge real estate market.

This Week’s Tribal Challenge: Race For The Future

As you’ll recall from last week’s show, the City Council voted prudence and good stewardship off the island, voting 7-1 to approve a massive up-zoning package for MIT in exchange for some $14 million in cash and a significant commitment to creating low-cost incubator office space for new business development. This was counted as a victory for Tribe #2 and a loss for Tribe #1, who will never see a penny of the swag paid by MIT.

The rapid succession of Tribe #2 victories as evidenced by city council votes on up-zoning petitions, has put Tribe #1’s back against the wall. As more developments are approved, more of the tribe’s families are squeezed out of Cambridge and sent into that dark unfriendly night.

Note the irony in Tribe #2 trumpeting this ongoing gentrification as their attempt to create affordable housing, while Tribe #1 has seen for itself that gentrification, no matter how you sugar-coat it with modest set-asides for affordable units, pushes the lower and middle economic stratas out of their homes and into someone else’s city.

So, this is basically a fight for survival, in the meanest sense, for Tribe #1. And this week on Survivor Cambridge we’ve got a challenge that reflects how desperate the situation has become.

Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, are you ready to race each other for the Survivor’s Crown?

Excellent! You realize the losing tribe will need to find somewhere else to live, or somewhere else to build 16- and 18-story residential towers? Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, you will race against each other, but each with a different challenge. Tribe #1, your challenge is simply to drive your cars from Central Square to Memorial Drive via Western Avenue. The only catch: Western Avenue will be a virtual parking lot, because we’ve simulated the expected auto impact from all of Tribe #2’s towers and up-zoned buildings, which will bring a minimum of 50,000 additional car trips onto Cambridge roadways.

Tribe #2, given your lock-hold on both the Planning Board and the City Council, you are being asked to get the entire Central Square Up-Zoning package approved and legislated before the first car from Tribe #1 reaches Memorial Drive.

The winning tribe of this challenge will be crowned Survivor and be allowed to live (or develop towers) in peace on the island.

Update: Clearly Tribe #1 had the more difficult task. In a move hailed as “Unexpectedly mischievous and tactically brilliant!” Tribe #1’s competitors quickly abandoned their vehicles for wheelchairs, which should have cut their time in half and given them a victory, had it not been for all the angry motorists who objected to anyone—even someone in a wheelchair!—cutting in front of them. We were still totaling up Tribe #1 casualties as Tribe #2 not only won approval of their Central Square up-zoning petition, but also laid down the cornerstone for their first 18-story residential tower.

Join us for the next episode of Survivor Cambridge.

• Watch as waves of low-income residents get stuck once again on Western Avenue, attempting to make their final Exodus from Cambridge.

• See members of Cambridge’s Community Development Department turn their attention to up-zoning Porter Square and North Cambridge. You’ll want to see just how high these folks can build towers on that side of town.

• Watch the Cambridge School System begin dismantling all the schools that become superfluous once most of Cambridge’s families are chased out of the city.

• Watch current residents vote the entire City Council off the island. Except Minka (of the unpronounceable name) who is elected Mayor for her courage in standing up to her colleagues and MIT.

• And please, remember to watch your back. If it can happen to Tribe #1 today, can your tribe be far behind?

Survivor Cambridge is a production of Blind Elephant Press.

Tell Me Lies: A Republican Songbook

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies

 …goes the refrain from Fleetwood Mac’s elegy to love, “Little Lies,” never envisioning it would someday become the default anthem for the Republican Party.pinocchio

The verse, innocent as it seemed at the time, goes on to threaten eventual public exposure…

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

Well, the Republicans, bless their little hearts, have resolutely ignored the import of the second two lines of the refrain, as they continue to cling to the first two lines as a strategic response to whatever they find unlikable in our shifting political landscape. In fact, they’ve been so successful in elevating lies to a status where they’ve become worthy of discussion, we are often placed in the unenviable position of defending reality or a political position against the onslaught of either (choose one) gross stupidity, willful misrepresentation, or extremist religious ideology.

(If you chose “ All of the Above” consider yourself smarter than most people who vote for Republican candidates.)

What songs must echo through your mind when you vote for the party that angrily shouts “Death Panels!” in response to a proposal that seeks to help the elderly prepare for their end of days.

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies…

And what refrain do you sing to yourself when you deny Global Warming and minimize it as a liberal conspiracy to hobble industry and waste taxpayer dollars? Even as you’re forced to shout, rather than sing, to be heard above the 100 year storms, once-in-a-lifetime floods, and record-breaking droughts and wildfires that are suddenly multiplying on the planet like Pharaoh’s plagues?

Tell me, do they really believe God made Adam from dust, and Eve from Adam’s rib bone? Or that Darwinism is heresy, Evolution an atheist’s revenge? Could anyone with higher than a fifth grade education truly believe that?

Tell me lies,

Tell me sweet little lies…

 But the biggest, balls-of-brass lies are the ones they sing about George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama (yes, the “Hussein” must be kept silent because lying, possibly unhinged Republican extremists regard the name as proof positive that Barack Obama is not only a Muslim but an Islamic terrorist out to destroy the American way of life).

And, of course, it’s also final proof—if any is needed—that our president wasn’t even born on American soil!

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

Then there’s the question of their wholesale ransacking of government programs. Programs critical to the upward mobility of the middle class; programs crucial to the very survival of the social safety net. The Republicans blame it all on Barack Hussein Obama and his policies, as if he were responsible for the size of the national debt, as if he chose to conduct two wars at once, as if the country’s financial sector collapsed on his watch instead of his predecessor’s, as if his policies somehow led to the recession he inherited!

As Bill Clinton said about the Republicans at the Democratic convention, “They made the mess, then blame him cause he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough.”

So, why suddenly do we need to throw out the character and conscience of America, as illustrated in the warp and woof of 80-plus years of humane, socially progressive legislation? Why should financial scarcity brought on by the excesses of a Republican administration; an administration so unconcerned about the public treasury it’s prescription drug bill prohibited the U.S. government from bargaining for better prices; why should Bush’s many over-indulgences, managerial incompetencies and financial missteps be allowed to kill off programs that were the work of many administrations and the combined will of the American people in the modern era?

There was no need to defenestrate government programs, no need to tinker with Medicare benefits, no push to reduce social security cost-of-living adjustments before George W. Bush embroiled us in two unwinnable wars and looted the treasury with two rounds of tax cuts. As was often remarked, no previous president had ever called for tax cuts in the midst of a war—let alone two wars!

That was only one of George W. Bush’s many firsts. Like being the first president to initiate a preemptive war; the first to make torture an acceptable means of interrogation; the first to attack a foreign country on trumped up evidence; the first to cripple his own war effort by starting a second war before finishing the first; and the first ex-president who can’t travel to foreign countries for fear of being arrested and tried as a war criminal.

Oh, no, no you can’t disguise

(You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise)

By the time the Republicans—following the dictates of their millionaire and billionaire masters—finish dismantling assistance programs for the poor, eliminating food stamps and Pell grants, crippling Social Security and Medicare, killing off public sector jobs, there won’t be an America left to celebrate as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

We’ll think of it instead as the Land of the Rich and the Home of the Poor.

And that’s no lie.