Mayor's Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Tenant Displacement - Meeting #5 Minutes

Mayor’s Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Tenant Displacement
Working Meeting
Tues, May 21, 2019, 5:30-7:30pm
Sullivan Chamber, City Hall
795 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 02139

Task Force Members in Attendance: Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, Chair; Sonia Andujar; Patrick Barrett; Teresa Cardosi; Jessica Drew; Betsy Eichel; Iram Farooq; Larry Field; Beth Huang; Kuong Lee; Maura Pensak (arrived before 6:00pm)

Task Force Members Absent: Sean Hope; Alexandra Markiewicz

City of Cambridge Staff in Attendance: Sarah Stillman

City of Cambridge Staff Absent: Wilford Durbin, Mayor 's Chief of Staff and Task Force Representative

The Mayor's Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Tenant Displacement remembers its esteemed honorary member, Cheryl-Ann Pizza-Zeoli (1957-2019), with gratitude for her life of dedicated advocacy and service to the Cambridge community.

The Mayor's Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Tenant Displacement convened for an informal, working meeting on Tuesday, May 21, 2019, in the Sullivan Chamber at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, Chair of the Task Force, convened the working meeting at 5:32pm with 10 members present.

The Task Force members broke out into Working Groups to discuss updates and continue making progress on their respective action areas. Chair Siddiqui and Sarah Stillman discussed with Funding Working Group members Teresa Cardosi, Kuong Lee and Jessica Drew some of the current challenges Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services is facing, such as funding cuts to services for elders in private housing, ideas for flexible funding options (e.g. a fundraising "Walk Fund"), limitations of the Richard Rossi Fund, and the need for crafting broad language around stabilization of tenancies vs. rental arrearages. Maura Pensak and Sonia Andujar of the Tenant Education Working Group checked in briefly with Chair Siddiqui on the status of the group's workplan, to be translated into the Task Force's final recommendations; Chair Siddiqui noted a report from a Philadelphia task force on eviction response, which Ms. Pensak and Ms. Andujar then left to review. Larry Field, Beth Huang and Betsy Eichel of the Legislative & Policy Agenda Working Group, along with Chair Siddiqui, met to discuss the group's work on developing recommended updates to the City's 1983 Condo Conversion Ordinance. They were joined by Iram Farooq, Task Force member and Assistant City Manager for Community Development, and Chris Cotter, Housing Director at the Cambridge Community Development Department, who offered insight and answered questions from Working Group members. The working meeting was adjourned at 7:30pm.

The next scheduled meeting of the Mayor's Blue-Ribbon Task Force on Tenant Displacement - the last before the Council takes summer recess - will be on Tuesday, June 18th from 5:30-7:30pm in the City Hall's Sullivan Chamber.