In a Council Comeback Bid, Peter Hsu Wants to Serve Cambridge’s ‘Most Vulnerable Populations’

As a doctor, Peter Hsu treated vulnerable patients in hospitals across the country. Now in his second bid for City Council, he wants to “raise the standards of public health” for Cambridge, too.

Hsu, a practicing physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, moved to Cambridge in 2019. If voters elect him to City Hall, Hsu hopes to make Cambridge “a model city for public health,” he said in an October interview.

That vision “encompasses a lot of different issues,” Hsu added, “including affordable housing and bike lanes, the two most debated topics in Cambridge.”

“Having an academic background in public health, I am really data-driven and evidence-based,” Hsu said. He writes on his campaign website that he will make decisions “based on science and evidence, NOT ideologies.”

With less than three weeks to go until Election Day, Hsu has been endorsed by the Cambridge Citizens Coalition and Cambridge Bicycle Safety, two of Cambridge’s three heavyweight advocacy groups.

Hsu has particularly aligned himself with the CCC, an outspoken residents association focused on housing. The group vocally opposed the City Council’s February decision to abolish single-family zoning in Cambridge through citywide upzoning.

Hsu said that the move, which passed after years of heated public debate, is “too pro-developer.” Although he supports multifamily zoning and increased development along main city arteries, Hsu said that he is wary of the February upzoning.

“I think when we do go taller and bigger, in a lot of the neighborhoods,” Hsu said, “we have to pay attention to the fact that we’re not cutting down excessive trees, green space.”

“I think we’ve gone way too far in terms of the pendulum swing,” he added.

Hsu also voiced concern over Cambridge’s city-run homeless shelters. In particular, he blasted the City’s decision to close the Transitional Wellness Center — one of Cambridge’s largest city-run shelters — last spring as federal funding for it expired.

To meet demand for homeless shelter space, Hsu suggested Cambridge convert empty lots in Kendall Square into “places where there are hot showers and beds for some of these folks.”

“I would love to raise the standards of public health for the most vulnerable populations,” he said.

This year’s campaign is not Hsu’s first bid for City Hall: He ran in 2023 with a similar focus on public health, though he came in 23rd in a field of two dozen candidates. It took Hsu less than a year to dig in for a second campaign, and he was knocking on doors by Nov. 2024.

Hsu has also entered this election cycle with significantly more financial muscle: He has raised more than $9,000 since Aug. 2024 — of which about $8,000 has been self-funded — compared to a total haul of around $5,000 last cycle.

To prepare for his second shot at Sullivan Chamber, Hsu paid closer attention to City Council meetings, read more local news coverage, and “talked to a lot of people.”

“The biggest difference compared to last time,” he said, “was that I gave myself more time to get prepared, to study city politics, to get to know all the nitty-gritties of Cambridge.”

—Staff writer Ann E. Gombiner can be reached at annie.gombiner@thecrimson.com.