Jess Sheehan

The denial about all this in some circles is just totally bonkers.

I’m introducing a policy order on sidewalk snow removal at our City Council meeting this Monday!

Some cities like NYC and Boston have recently been exploring increased municipal sidewalk snow clearance.

Cambridge can follow these cities’ leads and expand sidewalk snow clearance here as well!

This is good and I hope it passes.

Separately, am I crazy or is the PO in a different font than usual? I find it really hard to read.

Also, it shouldn't matter, but I say all that as a 4th gen Bostonian & 15yr Cambridge renter. I love both cities & think more people should be able to live here. But even if I wanted to keep "transients" out, we know the alternative to growth is not stasis. It's existing renters getting priced out.

*not just picking on Boston either

You don't need to have been born in your city, lived there for X years, own property, live in a certain type of housing, or have a certain type of family to be an invested and contributing member of your community. And everyone deserves basic respect from their elected officials.

Not Boston either - Cambridge has one councilor who has said similar things, though happily she's an outlier.

Every elected official should recognize that renters, people who live in apartment buildings, newcomers, young people, and families without children are their neighbors and constituents.

And yeah, this post is a slightly softer version of my initial thoughts on this.

Lots to say about antirenter prejudice, how it serves to bundle & obscure deeper biases re race & class & age, and about the electoral assumptions required for a councilor of a majority renter city to take this stance, but the thing I keep coming back to is just: what an absolute dick thing to say

MA needs state senators who have a real sense of urgency around the housing and affordability crises, who will stand up for our rights against this federal admin, and who are skilled at translating our core values into tangible policy progress. @burhanazeem.bsky.social is the one for the job!

What did we ever do to you Jonathan

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone Wednesday evening at Aeronaut Brewing to discuss the 2025 Cambridge election! 🚲 🗳️

As the guy who wrote the book on zoning abolition, I'd like to go on record as saying: if you can use zoning to stop the concentration camps, fucking go for it.

So that's my perspective. At the end of the day I respect that we probably aren't going to see eye to eye on this, and I genuinely appreciate the dialogue.

But I also think we should be upfront about what the ballot measure as written would do - crater housing production and encourage condo conversions at a time when we already have a severe shortage of rental housing, and when new builds have slowed. That's very bad for renters.

I know this isn't your first rodeo and that the state house has refused to allow Boston to implement a version of rent stabilization without all the flaws in this ballot measure. And I know there's a lot of pressure on all electeds to do *something.*

We're in complete agreement that the state needs to do much more to address the housing crisis, and about the ever-rising cost of inaction, but that doesn't mean that any action is positive. There are lots of things we could do to make the crisis worse, and I think we should avoid those things.

Some of this may be generational too. My mom grew up being told to be nice, which meant never bothering anyone.

She made it clear that she wanted me to always be kind and try to do the right thing, but that being nice was, frankly, optional.

My mom taught me that nice is what to be if you want others to like you, and kind is what to be if you want to like yourself.

All else equal, it's better to be nice than not. Getting along with others is usually good! But at times when they're in conflict, it's better to be kind than nice.

I think local control of zoning is a tool that has been used to do a lot more harm than good, but so long as it exists there's no reason to avoid using it to block actual terrible things. Housing good, concentration camps bad is pretty straightforward!

Anyone have recs for shoveling services in Roslindale? Trying to find someone to do 2 houses - sidewalks, front walkway and stairs for each, one driveway and ideally shoveling out one car.

I might agree if the ballot measure were just suboptimal, but it would actually make things worse. It just seems like a huge risk to me to vote for something we know would be bad in the hopes the legislature later steps in to turn it into something neutral or good.

Given the authoritarian propensity for paranoia, this actually might be doable

“Right now we settle for managing problems instead of solving them.”

🚨Massachusetts most effective pro-housing local official is running to become Massachusetts most effective pro-housing state official.

Burhan Azeem for State Senate!

New local paper! Run by Marc Levy, formerly of Cambridge Day.

If passed as written, the ballot measure would actively worsen the housing crisis in Boston and all of MA, so I don't think there's a reasonable strategic argument for supporting it. You can't make things better by making them worse.

Screaming in Boston

Maura Healey unveiled her latest plan to tackle Massachusetts’ housing crisis: Fewer staircases - The Boston Globe Fire codes have long required two staircases in mid-rise apartment buildings. But advocates worry that drives up construction costs. So the state will study doing away with one.

Most housing policy has focused on zoning reform. Less attention has been paid to building codes. Allowing single-stair design could unlock more housing overall, including more missing middle housing types that fit comfortably within existing neighborhoods.

www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/12/b...

Conversely, this is a huge opportunity for MA progressives who want to establish real credibility on the issue of housing affordability. It's one of the most important issues to MA voters, and support for pro-housing policies is growing on the left (see: Mamdani.)

Show us you're serious!

Hell, some of them have said they know it's bad publicly! We need real leadership on this. Achieving broad housing affordability is too important to cave on.