Cambridge Launches Task Force to Explore Social Housing Model

The Cambridge City Council appointed 13 members Monday to a new task force charged with studying whether the city should build social housing, marking its next attempt to address a housing crisis that has dominated municipal politics for more than a decade.

The task force will evaluate how Cambridge could finance, govern, and expand a model of social housing — permanently affordable, publicly owned, mixed-income developments — alongside the city’s existing affordable housing programs. Advocates have pushed the model as a way to grow housing supply without relying on the private market.

Its 13 members include Christopher Herbert, managing director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Sara Barcan, executive director of the nonprofit developer Homeowners Rehab Inc. The councilors and city officials who will round out the body have not yet been named. State Rep. Mike L. Connolly will serve in an advisory role.

Councilor Jivan G. Sobrinho-Wheeler, who co-sponsored the September policy order that created the task force, said social housing offers the city flexibility that traditional development cannot.

“Because there’s no need to pay back investors, you can use the income from the rents to have great community spaces and green spaces, and expand affordability, create additional social housing,” he said Monday.

Sobrinho-Wheeler filed the order alongside Councilors Marc C. McGovern, Ayesha M. Wilson, and Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui. The proposal moved to the Housing Committee in December and resurfaced as a shared priority in the Council’s long-term planning discussions this term.

“The interest that came out of the conversation was evident, and it carried forward to this term,” Siddiqui said.

City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 said the city views the initiative as a chance to examine newer approaches to publicly supported housing.

“I think there’s a lot of innovation happening in the financing and governance of public housing, social housing,” he said. “It’ll be a really interesting journey for us to be examining this.”

Staff in the city’s Community Development Department are hiring a consultant to support the task force’s research. The group will deliver a report to the Housing Committee outlining its findings, recommendations, and proposed next steps on key social housing questions.

Huang said those questions range from the “values we want to build in this” to the logistics of implementation. No deadline has been set for the report, but he said the task force should produce concrete proposals rather than abstract recommendations.

“To be more concrete, what is a project that we could actually turn into reality?” he asked. “I think that will be an important part of those conversations, and I’m excited about getting started.”

—Staff writer Risha Sinha can be reached at [email protected].