Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh are teaming up to tackle Greater Boston’s housing crisis. The two mayors will work with representatives from 14 cities and towns in the region, including Cambridge, to meet booming housing needs as people flock to Boston and its surrounding areas. “Our entire region is facing and […]
Cambridge is gearing up to select its Participatory Budget projects for FY19, and this time the city has $800,000 to play with. Officials narrowed a record-breaking 608 ideas down to 20 that community members can vote on from Dec. 2-8. Participatory Budget projects are one-time capital projects—typically related to infrastructure—that community members select to improve […]
City Councilor Nadeem Mazen can still remember representatives of special interest groups approaching him on the street to offer him funding during his 2013 campaign. “I would have folks who passed me on the street and say, ‘Nadeem it’s election season, I’ve got to give you that max contribution,’” Mazen says. When he declined, Mazen […]
Furnishing Hope, a nonprofit that works with recently housed families to make sure they have the essential furniture for their homes, is moving into Harvard Square this month. Furnishing Hope works with several agencies in Greater Boston to identify people who are transitioning out of homelessness or situations involving domestic violence. When people are in […]
The Cambridge City Council will discuss a policy order on Monday night that would establish a fund to aid Cambridge DACA recipients. The policy order comes after President Donald Trump announced a six-month-delayed ending of the Obama-era program that protected undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The deadline for current […]
When budget delegates convene next week to discuss 2018’s Participatory Budgeting proposals, they’re going to have their work cut out for them. This is the fourth PB cycle, which invites the community to decide how a portion of the city’s capital budget is spent. Ideas are organized into seven categories: culture and community facilities, education, environment, parks and […]
For the first time since 1998, Cambridge City Council voted on April 3 to increase mandatory affordable housing requirements for new developers. Beginning June 30, developers will be required to make 20 percent of total new units built affordable units, up from 15 percent. The measure comes after years of effort from activists and council […]
After months of four-hour hearings, multiple revisions and at least one mid-meeting snowball hurled by a frustrated citizen, the fate of a block of Harvard Square buildings remains uncertain.
Donald Trump, the former reality T.V. Star now slated to head the largest superpower in world history, has made no secret his disdain for undocumented immigrants. He’s called for a border wall, for mass deportations, for triple the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and he’s threatened to use federal funding as a […]
Earlier this year, a citizen-led immigrant affairs advocacy commission helmed by Emmanuel “Manny” Lusardi and Sylvie de Marrais helped reinvigorate the city’s Commission on Immigrant Rights and Citizenship, which had lain dormant for more than a decade. After working with Councilor Nadeem Mazen and with Vice Mayor Marc McGovern, that same group will tonight appear in front […]
It’s a sweltering, humid July day, but the Sullivan Chamber at Cambridge City Hall is nonetheless overflowing with attendees. A few audience members are spilling over into the threshold of the chamber door; some look down on the proceedings from the second-floor balcony. The source of such fervent interest in a mid-afternoon City Council meeting? […]
Cambridge is a city of immigrants. Out of a total population of 106,844, an estimated 30,075 residents—28.15 percent—are foreign born, according to 2010- 2014 data from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey. That makes the city one of the top communities in Massachusetts for immigrant populations—perhaps unsurprising, given that City Council unanimously reaffirmed Cambridge’s […]