 BIOTECH IMPACTS ON CAMBRIDGE HOUSING COSTS 64% of the 146 life sciences companies surveyed in Boston and Cambridge are located within just three zip codes: 02139 (Central Square/MIT), 02142 (Kendall Square/MIT) or 02138 (Harvard Square): https://news.mit.edu/2004/massimpact 72,960 BIOTECH EMPLOYEES work in Cambridge: Where will they find housing? We need to bring the bio-tech industry itself to the table in addressing our housing dilemma. Cambridge biotech employee numbers (73,000) supersedes the number of our EXISTING HOUSING STOCK (57,879 units) by nearly 15,000 units. Without some thoughtful city and area planning - and considerable help from the biotech community as a whole to help with housing that is affordable to its employees in the area (and related transportation) the middle cannot hold. The bio-tech jobs bring large numbers of new employees to Cambridge. These employees bring greater housing demand on the city. The average biotech salary in Cambridge is $105,000 per year. This is sizable, but not enough to allow most employees to viably rent or purchase a home in the city. Since single- and two-family homes remain the most desirable for these new employees and others, housing prices have soared, along with the cost of rental units close to Kendall Square. We need the tech industries here to become part of the solution. Upzoning the whole city to allow demolitions of existing sustainable homes will aggravate the situation further and will bring severe environmental harm as well. Background: “in 1977, when the city council passed the first legislation in the U.S. that allowed and regulated research into recombinant DNA, the floodgates opened and the neighborhood transformed into a bustling hub. Cambridge is now home to over 250 biotech companies, more than 120 of which are within the Kendall Square zip code.” Source: HERE This increase in Cambridge biotech employees has brought sizable tax returns as well as significant additional housing and other problems. “Expensive rents make the cost of doing business more expensive for biotech companies that want to base themselves in Boston and Cambridge. Public transportation needs improvement to solve traffic congestion. Massachusetts ranks near the bottom -47th nationally for commuting times and road quality. Likely Cambridge would rank even lower. Boston also has the worst rush-hour traffic in the country. This has led to local battling between bicycle lane advocates and people who need their cars to get to work. The Kendall Square Association, a business organization in Cambridge, issued a call to action in late 2018.” This speaks broader transportation concerns, they do not appear to have promoted a policy for helping to address broader area housing needs (and costs) which have greatly increased since 2018 . From 2008 to 2020, the Greater Boston biotechnology industry workforce grew approximately 55% from 54,000 to 84,000 workers.[15] 64% of the area biotech workers work in Cambridge. This same Greater Boston biotechnology industry workforce grew from approximately 84,000 in 2020 to 114,000 in 2022. 64% of the Boston area biotech employees work in Cambridge. This makes for about 72,960 biotech employees who live in Cambridge who are looking for housing that is affordable to them here. UNIVERSITY STUDENT IMPACTS ON LOCAL HOUSING COSTS The city undertakes an annual Town-Gown Report for its various city universities. One can read the 2023 report HERE MIT to date has more focused on using its Cambridge properties for (lab-related leases) rather than building needed housing for its sizable undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral affiliates. As of Fall 2023, Harvard University had approximately 7,000 undergraduate students (mostly housed in dorm residences) and around 18,000 graduate and professional students enrolled. Harvard University has some graduate student housing in Allston an is planning to build more here. MIT has 7,344 Graduate students and 1,394 postdoctoral scholars (the latter as of 2020). MIT is building some undergraduate housing in Cambridge, but in large part its graduate students and post doctoral students and staff are not housed in university affiliated housing. 10,473 Cambridge University Students and Postdocs Compete for off-campus homes here, alongside sizable numbers of staff and facultyData in the 2023 Town gown report HERE   UNDERGRADUATE OFF-CAMPUS STUDENT HOUSING NEEDS Harvard University 30 students need off-campus housing (out of 7,028 students) HUIT International 418 students need off-campus housing (out of 789 students) Lesley University 164 students need off-campus housing (out of 643 students) MIT 153 students need off-campus housing (out of 3916 students) GRADUATE STUDENT OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING NEEDS Harvard: 3920 students need off-campus housing (out of 6603 students) HUIT International: 692 students need off-campus housing (out of 891) students Lesley University 90 students need off-campus housing (out of 110) students) MIT 2646 students need off-campus housing (out of 5043 students) POST-DOCTORATE OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING NEEDS Harvard University 1103 people need off-campus housing MIT 1267 people need off-campus housing s SUB-TOTAL OF OFF-CAMPUS STUDENT HOUSING NEEDS: Harvard University 5053 individuals (30 + 3920 +1103) HUIT International 1110 (418 + 692) Lesley University 254 (164 + 90) MIT 4066 (153 + 2646 + 1267). Student and post doc NUMBERS: 5053 +1110 + 254 +4056= 10,473. TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS & POSTDOCS : 10,473 (those who need housing here). Our students generally rent apartments (2 to 3 people per unit), often receiving housing allotment increases to meet yearly increased housing costs, and often turning over apartment leases every few years, which enables landlords to increase rents higher than they might for longer term tenants. Add to this student number the many Faculty and Staff at each of these universities. Current Cambridge based University Employees (based on the 2023 Town-Gown Report Harvard – Staff: 11,461 and Faculty: 1,766 Huit Int.- Staff: 120 and Faculty: 30 Lesley – Staff: 273 and Faculty: 195 MIT – Staff 8,680 and Faculty: 1042 TOTAL University Staff & Faculty: 23,569 Of these currently 6,897 live in Cambridge, but potentially, 14,652 additionally might be interested in living here. TOTAL of university affiliates who need or may want housing in cambridge Students: 10,473 Employees not now living here: 14,652 TOTAL university housing need: 25, 125 individuals TOP 20 CITY EMPLOYERS & THEIR EMPLOYEE NUMBERSIn addition to our universities and biotech companies, the city of Cambridge has a number of other large employers. Among the top 20 employers of the City of Cambridge is the city itself whieh employees 3,594 people, while the federal government employs 1,152 people. In addition we have Mt. Auburn Hospital and the Cambridge Health Alliance with 1,348 and 1,534 employees respectively. Infotech is also big business here, including . Cambridge Innovation center (3,883), Google (2,100), Broad Institute (1,936), Hubspot (1,771) , AkaMai (1,593, and EF Education (1,206).Source: City of Cambridge HERE These employers alone add an additional 20, 117 employees. Most of these employees likely also would want to find housing in the city of Cambridge .  OUTSIDE HOUSING INVESTORS Investors constitute a significant part of our home purchases - roughly 18.1% (one in five homes). Large and institutional investor transactions between 2004 and 2019 constitute 27.6%. Two- and Three-Family homes are the greatest subject of these investments at 32.4% and 31.3% respectively. The share of flip transactions in Cambridge between 2002 and 2021 is 7.1% Find related data at Homes for Profit: HERE If Cambridge chooses to remove current perceived "barriers" to investors (zoning controls and review processes such as the BZA, Planning Board, and CHC) the numbers of these investor-led property changes that seek to profit from Cambridge housing is likely to increase far more.   CONCLUSIONS:
The housing center cannot hold without a serious city and area plan and signifcant help from our biotech industries and universities. We already have impossibly high steeply rising housing costs across all types of housing. We need to create a plan, in conjunction with our biotech and other large local employers (including our universities) to address this situation. Simply opening up the floodgates to market rate forces (local, national, and international investors) will only make the situation worse - increasing housing costs further and destroying many of the qualities of our city and our neighborhoods that make it a wonderful place to live. If currently, some 30% of residential properties here are likely owned by people or companies located outside the city (outside investors and companies), we are likely be become an even greater target of outside investment activity, that will further raise our housing prices. In short, if we built enough NEW housing to fill the need of current Cambridge employees and students/post-docs without campus housing, it would have to double our current population (and housing units) and this number would not even account for the number of potential new residents desiring to live here as former students and others who find this historic city with its great universities and wonderful place to live and/or invest in. In short we CANNOT build ourselves out of this dilemma without increasing property values and housing costs even more. We need a thoughtful, an area-wide approach and considerable help from our largest employers. We can only achieve this with smart and cohesive plan that also integrates infrastructure, transportation, and environmental needs.
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