Please note: The following letter is provided as guidance to help you draft your letter of support to the Cambridge City Council. However, please make sure to add your own thoughts or experience. The Council has received many communications on this topic already, and personalized messages will be more persuasive.

Dear City Councillors:

I am writing to express my support for an affordable housing overlay concept as outlined in recent Envision Cambridge presentations. Many Cantabrigians pride themselves on their progressive politics and the diversity of incomes and backgrounds represented among the city’s residents, but with the soaring costs of housing, our community has already experienced a significant loss of this diversity. Bold, forward-thinking measures to increase affordable housing in our community are imperative to living our shared progressive values.

As a city and region we face a housing affordability crisis, and one of the most important actions we can take to address that crisis is to build more affordable homes. An affordable housing overlay will make our non-profit affordable housing developers more competitive against their market rate competitors. It is important that Cambridge be a leader in affordable housing, and adopt this overlay to ensure that residents of all income levels can afford to live in any Cambridge neighborhood they choose.

I look forward to contributing my voice and learning more as the conversation about the affordable housing overlay zoning develops in the coming months. In the meantime I wanted you to know how important this issue is to me, and I hope we can work together to adopt a strong and citywide affordable housing overlay in 2019.

Thank you,