Cambridge Residents Satisfied With City Hall but Give Low Marks on Housing

Cambridge residents said they were highly satisfied living in the city and with the quality of government services, but gave local officials low marks on housing and transportation issues in the 2024 iteration of the Cambridge Resident Satisfaction Survey.

The city uses the survey, which is conducted by Polity Research Consulting, to gauge public opinion on a number of issues and conduct longitudinal research. This year’s survey found that residents were highly satisfied on a range of important metrics, including Cambridge as an overall place to live and city government performance ratings.

But despite the overall rosy picture, the survey indicated that residents felt the city was particularly underperforming on housing and transportation, which they said were especially high priorities.

The survey asked residents to rank in priority and assess the city’s performance on several issues with a five-point scale.

Respondents indicated their top priorities for the coming two years revolved around housing affordability, with market rents and housing prices slightly edging out subsidized and income-restricted housing in importance. About 66 percent and 61 percent of respondents assessed affordable market housing and affordable subsidized or income restricted housing, respectively, as “extremely important.”

Nearly 60 percent of respondents indicated that the quality of the transportation system was extremely important.

In terms of performance, residents assessed the city’s performance on housing as by far the worst, with a majority of respondents saying the city performed at one or two out of five points. Only 6 percent of respondents rated the city five out of five — excellent — on market-rate housing that is affordable.

The runners up for worst performance were “the balance between new construction and preservation” and affordable housing that is subsidized or income-restricted, respectively — gesturing at the contentious debates over affordable housing projects that have engulfed Cambridge in recent weeks.

Likewise, the analysis used the importance and performance ratings to calculate an importance-performance gap to identify issues that are high priorities and are assessed as being addressed poorly.

The issue with the highest importance-performance gap was affordable market housing, followed by affordable housing that is subsidized or income-restricted, and then the transit system.

In a letter to the City Council sharing the survey results, City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 wrote that the results will “inform our collective shaping of policies and initiatives that resonate with the needs and aspirations of Cambridge residents,” adding that he hopes the Council will discuss the results in a roundtable discussion.

“Overall, the survey results underscore the community’s satisfaction with many aspects of city life, alongside clear areas for improvement,” Huang wrote. “I hope these findings assist the Council in its ongoing efforts to enhance the quality of life in our city.”

A city spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

—Staff writer Benjamin Isaac can be reached at benjamin.isaac@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @benjaminisaac_1.