Gentrification in Cambridge

Standing in the center of Cambridge a woman in a green blouse and black business pants was pointing at a complex apartment on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and River Street. Her teenage memories came to mind.

“I used to hang out with a Brazilian friend there,” she said, “and it used to be a dumpy lower-income house.”

It was the Holmes Building on 632 Massachusetts Avenue that Gabrielle Rene was talking about. Sitting in the heart of Central Square, this six-story luxury building with brown bricks and dark green roof top leases at an average of $2400 per month for a two-bedroom apartment. Because of the high rent, Rene’s friend first moved out to Somerville, and then further to Malden.

“Cambridge is getting more desirable,” Rene said. “There’s more demand, but not many apartments, and not many people can afford it.”

Since 1996, the average rental price for a one-bedroom in Cambridge has tripled from $916, to $1600 by 2006, and now is $2709, as of October 2015 according to realtor.com.

City Councilor Marc McGovern admitted that the housing problem has never been more critical for Cambridge due to the end of rent control in 1995.

In 1970, Cambridge imposed far-reaching rent controls on residential properties built prior to 1969. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the controlled units typically rented at 25 to 40 percent below the prices of nearby uncontrolled units. More than one-third of the city's total residential units were subject to rent control.

Joseph Migual, a 25-year Cambridge resident who originally came from Puerto Rico, recalled that he only paid $230 a month for a one bedroom twenty years ago.

But in 1994, a statewide referendum placed by opponents of rent-control policies in Massachusetts narrowly passed, by a 51-to-49 percent margin. Since then the government no longer has the power of interfering in the housing market.

Councilor McGovern explained that the loss of government regulation has given the housing market much more room to raise prices, attracting landlords to raise the rents or turn rental units into condominiums.

A research paper Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence From the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts estimated that the end of rent control raised the overall valuation of Cambridge's housing stock by $1.8 billion between 1994 and 2004.

In terms of rental units, close to 4,000 of them were converted to expensive condominiums in the ten years following the loss of rent control, according to McGovern.

He said that the depletion of rental stock, imbalance of supply and demand in the rental market and the loss of government control were the main reasons which drove the rents dramatically in the past decades.

However, he also pointed out the significant transformation in Kendal Square, where candy factories were turned into pharmaceutical and biotech companies that attracted different groups of immigrants, many of whom were Asians.

According to the 2010 Census data of Cambridge, in one decade there was an increase of over 30 percent in the Asian population.

“There’s always been some type of gentrification,” McGovern said. For all the time he has been living in the city, he noticed that a lot of working class people moved into the city in the 70s. They were now replaced by people with stronger educational backgrounds because of the change in the industries.

“Thousand of them, many making very good salaries wanted to reside in Cambridge,” Councilor McGovern said, “so they were able to pay higher rents for the apartments that were still available.”

As the city continues to expand and improve, a lot of lower-income people are weeded out of the city. A large percentage of them are immigrants like Rene’s friend.

Similar movement happened in Cambridge’s public schools as well. Vera Duarte, the teacher in charge of English Language Learners department at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, said that they have lost many Brazilian students since 2002 because of the high rent. Instead, Asians and Ethiopians students from wealthy families make up the majority of international students. 

Duarte said that many low-income immigrants moved to cheaper towns such as Revere for an average two-bedroom rent of $1918, or Malden for $1681, based on the data from realtor.com.

But McGovern argued that low-income people in general have a much more difficult time coming to the city. He said that it’s like a natural selection, where the industries and the housing prices determine what groups of immigrants can afford to to live here.

Yet still, the city attracts people from everywhere for its good reputation in services, environment, and education in particular.

“Cambridge is a place where people really want to invest on education,” said Eliel N Pinheiro who teaches language and bridges culture gaps for Portuguese and Brazilians in Cambridge.

A large number of Brazilians and Portuguese still go to churches in Cambridge, according to a pastor Silvio Simons dos Santos. But he said they live in Somerville, New Bedford or Newton.

“It’s never a city for Portuguese and Brazilian” Pinheiro said from his experience in the past 20 years.

Rene feels the same. “You see people of all kinds as you walk down the street, but they do not necessarily live here.”

In responding to the downside of gentrification, McGovern said that the city has always wanted to maintain economic diversity, but he is upset to see the loss of working and middle class residents.

“We are more and more becoming a community with folks who are low income enough to qualify for public housing and those who are wealthy enough to pay very high rental and home ownership prices,” McGovern said.

However, a dilemma arose for people like Rene, whose incomes are not low enough to qualify for affordable housing, but are not wealthy enough to pay at the market prices either. Moving back to the city where she grew up in is not easy for her.

“I wish my family could have bought a house earlier,” Rene said that after she had consulted with the Housing Division of City Development Department. Rene, who currently lives in Milton, originally came from Haiti and has been in the U.S. for 28 years.

Houses are too expensive for Rene as well. Data from Realtor.com shows that the average home price is $839,000, 1.6 times higher than state average. 

McGovern said that it was the wealthier people who raised the prices. He stated on his reelection campaign website this fall that “people moving to the city who earn higher wages will drive up the prices in rental units… as they have done for decades.”

The city has just successfully negotiated a new affordable housing initiative called the Mass+Main project with a private developer, which would add 47 affordable units to the city. The city is also going to "buy" three additional units to bring the total of affordable units for this project to 50. McGovern said that building more units will bridge the gap between supply and demand and can therefore effectively lower the prices.

“Programs like our inclusionary zoning program and developments like Mass and Main are important because it allows working class and middle income families who would otherwise be priced out of the city the opportunity to stay,” he said.

Although housing has always been the number one issue for the Cambridge, McGovern viewed it as a positive sign for a more vibrant city.

“The alternative is not something we want to have,” which are the crime rates, social services, safety and other issues that city used to face, he said.

In addition to increasing affordable housing units, the city will also focus on education. McGovern said that they will continue to improve schools to prepare children with skill sets for high-paying jobs.

“At the end of the day, you can’t stop people from coming to the the city,” McGovern said.

Cambridge Public Library O’Connell Branch is Returning with New Look

Cambridge-One of the first established branch libraries of the Cambridge Public Library, the O’Connell branch will be reopening to the public soon, after it closed for repairs in early July.

A notice that hangs on the door of the O’Connell branch library details the construction that is underway. Susan Flannery, the director of the Cambridge Public Library, says the building will reopen in the next few weeks but does not have an exact date.

For the 24 years Flannery has worked at the Cambridge Public Library, the O’Connell branch has not received any maintenance. Still, Flannery says, it offers an intimate space for people in East Cambridge to gather around and celebrate international cultures.

“Every building needs renovation, otherwise they will fall apart,” Flannery concedes.

According to Flannery, each branch library provides resources on one foreign language, depending on which ethnic groups live in the neighborhood. For example, the Valente branch features Portuguese, the Central Square branch highlights Spanish and the O’Connell branch has Chinese staff working there. 

Standing in front of the single-story brownstone with cracked wooden exterior, dusty window panes, and brown glass doors, an East Cambridge resident searches for more information about the reopening of the O’Connell branch.

“We miss it,” says Sitarah Clark, the East Cambridge resident who has lived here for a year and half. She came to the library weekly with her daughter until it closed for renovation.

The Cambridge Public Library O’Connell branch was first established in 1897 and moved in 1939 to 48 Sixth St. where it has been ever since. The building is now surrounded by falling leaves and weeds. If not for the craftsman standing on the ladder painting the door frame, this antique house could easily blend in with the nearby homes.

In this new era where people consume an abundance of information online everyday, small local libraries matter more as a community gathering place for a neighborhood. Flannery says she sees people of all kinds -- age, income, educational background, ethnic background -- going to the library everyday.

Clark is one of them. Working for a non-profit project that helps youth gangsters to find solutions and changes their lives (Solution to Uplift Community Kids, also know as STUCK ), she usually comes to O’Connell branch library for resources, news, and printing services. Her daughter, age 17, also comes here for school work. Clark says she finds the small reading area very comfortable and she is able to get to know the people in the neighborhood.

“It’s very helpful,” says Clark. “If I lost my library card, they remember me.”

Patrons of the O’Connell branch are now going to the Valente branch, which is less than half a mile away. However, this winter, the Valente branch along with the King Open School will be razed in order to build new buildings for the library and the school, With the reopening of the O’Connell branch, patrons from the Valente branch will have a place to go during theyears-long construction.

“Our goal is to expand the opening hours at the O’Connell library,” Flannery says. In order to pick up the slack, O’Connell will be opening an extra day a week, with three days having extended evening hours till 7:30 p.m.

Flannery explains that they don’t have money to do everything at every library because of the limited budget that comes from the city manager.

“It’s very fortunate to have seven libraries within 6 square miles in Cambridge,” Flannery says. “Most towns only have one.”

 “I want the people in the community to think of the library as being theirs and part of them,” Flannery says. “We could make our world better by educating ourselves and by making it available to everybody, regardless of their ability to pay.”