FROM THE GROUND UP

For 50 years, East Cambridge –based affordable housing developer Just A Start has been quite literally building space for low-income residents from the ground up. And that’s just one of the ways they’ve been fighting income inequality in the increasingly divided city.

Last month, Just A Start purchased a 43,800 square foot property at 52 New St. in North Cambridge. The organization, which hopes to build approximately 100 units at the site, acquired the property in BY THOMAS GILLESPIE

what has become their trademark hands-on approach, says Real Estate Director Noah Sawyer: “We have to hustle, we have to sell people on our mission.”

According to Sawyer, 52 New St. had been a development project that didn’t work out. After its plans initially fell through, Just A Start began “aggressively” pursuing the property—working with the City of Cambridge to ensure the nonprofit acquired it, and ultimately receiving a large portion of the financing from the Cambridge Affordable Housing Trust.

Competing with luxury developers and deep-pocketed universities and tech companies has forced the organization to pursue a number of creative measures in its search for space to make Cambridge affordable.

One new source of benefactors is longtime Cambridge residents, who are looking to preserve Cambridge’s inclusive character; in the last six months, two have approached Just A Start with the intention of handing over their homes for affordable housing in their wills, according to Executive Director Carl Nagy-Koechlin.

Nagy-Koechlin sees these gifts as a fruitful avenue for the organization to create new pockets of affordability throughout the city’s neighborhoods. However, despite the New Street acquisition and Just A Start’s other ongoing projects, he stresses that the affordability crisis in Cambridge continues to grow.

“We’re in a prolific phase, with about 215 [units] queued up, but even that’s a drop in the bucket,” he

says. “We’re working hard to help people thrive in Cambridge, and that means a stable place to live and a sustaining career. We’d like to be more comprehensive and holistic in terms of how we serve people.”

Gerry Zipser, Just A Start’s director of housing, echoes Nagy-Koechlin’s belief regarding the need for conversations about affordability to move beyond just housing.

“When you’re low-income, you’re subject to so many more crises that you may not be able to deal with financially,” she mentions. “When we did our first food pantry at our Rindge property … we found that 18 percent of [the residents] were food insecure. Sometimes, you’ve got to start with basic necessities.”

From Zipser’s perspective, Just A Start and similar organizations working to make Cambridge more equitable must address a wide industry, often maligned for skyrocketing prices in the city, as an opportunity to reconnect the city’s prosperity with its residents.

“These companies are struggling to find talent and fill positions, so we’re in a moment where we can persuade them to think a little outside the box,” he notes. “There’s data that candidates from the most prestigious universities might not stay in the area long, so we’re able to make an argument that the people we’re training in our life sciences training program and in our IT program are really good matches for those positions.”

Prioritizing opportunities for local residents in Cambridge’s booming economy, however, is only one step in building a more connected community. Zipser emphasizes that many of Just A Start’s current residents work directly in the city’s local

“We’re probably your neighbors already, and we think we’re pretty good neighbors.”

range of structural barriers to help low- and moderate-income families truly thrive.

“We have a longstanding biomedical careers training program,” Zipser explains. “The idea is to take folks in Cambridge who may not have a college degree or might have credentials from their home country that haven’t translated and get them into the biomedical field, and the income stream that comes with that.”

Likewise, Nagy-Koechlin sees Cambridge’s biotech institutions and neighborhoods.

“We need housing for people you already know … who work in our public schools, [or] are home health aides,” she underlines.

“The goal is to bring in families who contribute to their neighborhoods,” Sawyer adds. “We’re probably your neighbors already, and we think we’re pretty good neighbors.”

Nathanson says the administration’s pledge to engage with its legacy of slavery is a hollow promise that extends to Harvard applicants.

“When students apply to grad school here, they see those promises about fixing the legacy of slavery,” she says. “That might have been why they felt comfortable coming to this school.”

Nathanson says that the primary purpose of the lawsuit is to bring about a court order for Harvard’s divestment from the PIC. Another important goal is to spread information and education about the PIC, she says. It could be a year before the case reaches summary judgment, she adds.

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ABOLITION ACTION ASSEMBLIES

Drake and Matthew used abolition as a theoretical framework for their work, seeing incarceration as an extension of the legacy of slavery. Ultimately, he is working for the abolition of the prison system at large.

“People in prison ... were saying these conditions are as severe as the conditions were for people under slavery,” he says. “We need to abolish the prison and all the different structures like police [and] jails that funnel people into prison.”

Drake’s words fall in line with an excerpt from The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, which the HPDC uses in their lawsuit.

“We are legally slaves,” the excerpt reads. “If you’ve been to prison, you’d know we are treated like slaves.”

Abolition Action Assemblies, a series of gatherings meant to educate other students on the PIC, further the legacy of Drake and Matthew’s initial teach-in. Each assembly highlights a different aspect of the PIC, covering topics from public health to gentrification to transformative justice. One focused on real estate, as Harvard is one of the largest property owners in Massachusetts.

Chan says the assemblies are an effort to shed light on the aspects of prisoners’ lives that are often hidden from people’s imaginations, like the quality of food.

DESIRED OUTCOMES

“I want Harvard to actually respond with some structural changes to this investment approach and … to commit to removing its holdings from any funds that benefit from human cages. I would say I also want to see Harvard take meaningful steps to remedy those harms,” Drake says.

That would look like making financial investments in cooperative housing and other prison alternatives, or offering more learning opportunities to share ways of addressing harm and violence that don’t rely on or reproduce structures of violence, Drake explains.

At a joint rally with other campus activist groups on Jan. 27, members of the HPDC called for PIC divestment alongside a Palestine solidarity group, Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, a reproductive justice group, the Graduate Student Union, the undocumented students rights group Act on a Dream, a group promoting ethnic studies, and other similar organizations. The conversations heavily focused around the idea of “Veritas”— the latin word for “truth,” which appears on the Harvard logo.

“Our campaign [is organized] in the spirit of abolition, which I think envisions a safe world without prisons, borders, and cages of any kind,” Chan said at the rally.

Chan was one of dozens of student activists who gathered in a semi-circle in the lobby of the Harvard Science Center lobby. All spoke of intersectionality, and the need to join forces to strengthen their respective groups. The rally ended with a triumphant march towards the John Harvard statue—an emblem of the university’s storied history. The fight for each of these groups is still in its early stages, however, with a much longer march ahead.

Lilly Milman also contributed to this report. An expanded version of this story can be found at scoutcambridge.com.