Cambridge: How Model a City?

Since the late '50s Cambridge has undergone changes dramatically affecting the lives of many of its residents. Harvard and MIT have continuously expanded, and several companies employing a large number of professionals have moved into the city. The combined effect of these two trends has been a substantial increase in the number of students and skilled workers wishing to live in Cambridge.

During the '60s many of the multiple dwellings and apartments in Cambridge fell into the hands of speculators who used the increased demand for housing to garner excessive profits. From 1960-1970 the average monthly rent in Cambridge rose 90 per cent, compared to a 26 per cent increase for the entire Boston area.

Meanwhile, in the last ten years, blue-collar industries have moved out of the city, resulting in a sharp rise in unemployment for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Lacking jobs and facing rising rents, these people have had to move out of Cambridge or into substandard housing within the city.

In 1968 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recognized the seriousness of Cambridge's difficulties and approved the formation of the Cambridge Model Cities Association (MCA). HUD approved Cambridge neighborhoods three and four as the demonstration area to receive federal funds. Cambridge Street and Mass Ave bound the area on the north and south; Portland Street and the B&A railroad form the western and eastern boundaries.

At the time of their selection, neighborhoods three and four had the worst conditions of any area in the city. Twenty seven per cent of the housing units had been declared substandard. Eighty per cent of those neighborhood residents who earned less than $6,000 paid more than the federally-stipulated maximum per cent of their incomes on rent. The area had the highest rates of unemployment and juvenile delinquency in Cambridge.

Two thirds of the community's residents over age 25 had no high school diploma. Almost half of the population was either first or second generation immigrants.

In early 1968 HUD gave the city its first of five annual $1,500,000 grants to "carry out coordinated physical and social renewal programs to improve the general welfare" of area residents, Characteristic of many Great Society programs, HUD stipulated that "Model Cities plans must, if they are to receive federal support, emanate from the ideas of residents as well as the work of professionals; from the involvement of public as well as involvement of private groups."

The Cambridge MCA formed a policy board of 24 members to determine the allocation of funds. The board included eight appointed professionals from city government and universities, and eight elected members from each of the two demonstration neighborhoods. Members were to serve two-year terms.

MCA scheduled the first election for June 1968. Francis Hayes, one of the victorious candidates and presently executive director of MCA, recalls the phenomenal interest and enthusiasm of the candidates and area residents. "People campaigned. There were speeches and parades...Five thousand people voted (out of a 16,000 total population). A few people bound the ballots in red ribbons and bows and brought them to the city council to show them how high a turnout we had."

Today the policy board, elected and appointed in 1972, has the cultural and occupational diversity of both of those before it. The 16 elected residents include three clergymen, a financial consultant, several welfare recipients, and one gas meter inspector. Frank Fraumeni, a 24-year-old former board chairman, now unemployed, received the most votes in neighborhood three. Father Currun was the most successful vote getter in neighborhood four. "But they put a ballot box in front of his church," Fraumeni says with a smile.

The Model Cities Policy Board performs two functions. Primarily it allocates money to "sub-contractors," local housing or child care. The Policy board members also constitute the Citizen Participation committee, which responds to complaints not addressed by other local organizations.

Many such sub-contractors have achieved tangible success. The Neighborhood Family Care Center, one of only three licensed clinics in the country run by local citizens, serves as a model of innovative citizen participation. Model Cities Child Care has aided over a hundred community mothers. Homeowners Rehab In., a 'sub-contractor' that secures low interest loans to improve the condition of substandard houses, continues to grow.

It is harder to measure the success of the Citizen Participation committee. Some board members think Citizen Participation money could help more people if the board diverted the funds into other areas. Most members disagree. The board has been important in several instances, most recently in support of the Douglas Street Tenants Association in their fight to save an old apartment building near Central Square.

Unfortunately, while Cambridge Model Cities attempted to expand its influence, the federal government was changing its domestic policies. In a series of moves supported by Kennedy-Johnson social planners who had become disillusioned with federal citizen participation programs. President Nixon called for the end of specified grants to the cities and pushed his general revenue-sharing program. The government decided in 1969 to phase out the Models Cities program over the next four years.

Although most MCAs no longer receive federal funds, HUD renewed the grant of the Cambridge MCA for 1974 on the basis of its successful record. These funds, however, total only $303,00, just twenty per cent of HUD's grants in each of the first five years.

Consequently, all the organizations receiving funds from Model Cities lobbied frantically at policy board meetings. This year the board met three times a week for three months before convening in mid-March to finalize the budget.

The final budgetary meeting began at 8 p.m. It soon became apparent that the policy board was finding it difficult to divide the much smaller pie. Tempers flared a few times, most strongly during the discussion over how much money the board would keep for itself under Citizen Participation.

A younger member suggested that they should use the money in ways that would more directly aid local residents. "You cut CP and I'll cut you," snapped a member who has served on the board since 1968. "If you came to a few more meetings you'd know why we need the money." Finally, by the time the meeting had ended at midnight, the policy board had reached a compromise. Board members congratulated one another as they left.

Now, local organizations who lost their funds have begun to complain that MCA uses too much of its budget for administrative costs. MCA cannot function efficiently and at the same time finance community groups on a $300,000 budget.

The Model Cities policy board does not directly aid local citizens; it merely allocates funds to groups within the city that aid the underprivileged. Clearly, if the residents of Cambridge must decide between maintaining the board or the local aid organizations, they will choose the latter.

But this does not mean that the allocation of funds by citizens for their community does not have great validity. Hopefully, government policy in the next decade will attempt to increase the efficiency of citizen participation programs rather than eliminate them. For, if the experts and professionals of the bureaucracy cannot integrate citizen participation into the political process, we can expect that the government will become less and less responsive to the needs of unorganized citizens.