Very interesting article. Part of me wonders how much Cambridge is an outlier in our housing success (relatively speaking of course) because it has an insane tax base relative to population size.

A rather distinct narrative from the one typically offered on the topic of housing. Good article.

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Do you know how to use “tl;dr”?

Enjoyed it, but walked away scratching my head. It seems really disingenuous to heap accolades onto CHA while not even discussing Cambridge's insane housing prices or the "winners and losers" issue public housing creates.

The idea of social housing is that if you have enough of it and it’s high quality, private landlords will have to compete. There is no modification or wealth generation happening when you’re struggling to stay afloat. If you can afford to buy a condo you’re still free to do that, but if not, at least you’d have a safe and functional place to live. I would support a policy of near universal public housing, just as I advocate for a single-payer universal healthcare system and for the same reasons. You could always buy your own house but for most people it wouldn’t be worth the extra cost. If you are against public housing, you support homelessness and destitution, plain and simple.

Independent professionally run services is one of the arguments in favor of our city manager system.

Unfortunately the article does not mention rent control and the fact that we’re a small part of a large region that mostly refuses to do anything meaningful on housing. Private landlords are mostly scum and need to be driven out of business with massive investment in social housing.

Resident population prolly around 110k

Daytime population is over 250k

In 6 sq miles. The very definition of 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag.