An Interview with Matt McLaughlin

Somerville City Councilor and State Senate candidate

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ben Orenstein: In the past, you told me that your time in municipal government showed you where local power ends. What’s the most important thing that Somerville needs state action to do?

Matt McLaughlin: I think I told you that when we first did the city charter, we had to ask for approval to change the name from Board of Aldermen to City Council. So it’s not a question of what — it’s everything. You have to get approval from the state for everything to really make any significant change.

Some of the home rule petitions we sent: we sent the entire city charter up; that’s the one thing that got passed. We submitted a home rule petition for a real estate transfer fee. That didn’t happen. We sent a rent control home rule petition up. That didn’t happen. We requested that Tufts University have a master plan; we needed a home rule petition for that. That didn’t happen. Tenant right of first refusal: that didn’t happen. Safe consumption sites. Almost everything you can think of requires some sort of state approval.

Ben: What do you make of that? Why do you think Beacon Hill is at such odds with what we’re trying to do in Somerville?

Matt: I think there’s recent history and then there’s old history. This goes back to the foundation of the state with John Adams. I wrote a piece about this that you can read. The title ended up being “John Adams Doesn’t Trust You.” It was about charter reform, because the state constitution was a model for the US Constitution. John Adams was a driving force behind it, and he was a person who did not really trust the public. Some people accused him of being a monarchist, and he created a state government that’s very rigid and can’t be changed. So it’s built into the system to make it difficult to change things. In some cases that makes sense, because you don’t want to just dramatically change things all the time. But we’ve gotten to a point where the state legislature doesn’t want to do anything.

I think that’s because of the recent history of noncompetitive elections. People don’t run for office. We have the second least competitive elections in the country, after Alabama. That’s why this seat is so hot right now: it’s the first time the seat’s been open in about thirty years. So we have four people running for it now. There were five until yesterday¹. There’s no competition, there’s no need, there’s no sense of urgency.

And part of that is also because a lot of the people at the State House aren’t physically feeling the pain that people in the community feel. If this entire neighborhood gets gentrified five times over, it doesn’t matter, because the voting base is still the same. For me, it’s very personal, because the people I care about are leaving. That’s why I want to bring that message up there. I feel like I have a sense of urgency that other people don’t have.

Ben: Why does the state default to no on those home rule petitions? Is it ideological, or just an unwillingness to do anything?

Matt: I think it’s complacency. You look at a state like California, which probably has very similar politics to us, and they pass legislation all the time, and they have ballot questions that can be kind of crazy sometimes. So I think it’s the structure of our government combined with complacency, and just the fact that people get to keep their seat forever if they want to. I’m not even sure it’s ideological. On some of the things we’re talking about, yes, there are active forces who don’t want them to happen. But other times, it just seems like the effort isn’t being put in.

Ben: Why do people stay in their seats so long? Is there some way to make state-level elections more competitive?

Matt: I hear people talk about election changes all the time, and I’m not opposed to them. Ranked choice voting would make a lot of sense for this race in particular, where there are four people running and someone could win with 25% of the vote. So in that case, election reform makes a lot of sense. I do think, though, that doesn’t answer the original question of why people don’t run for office at all. And I think that’s a money thing. It’s a time thing. The Democratic Party in particular in Massachusetts is a supermajority, so there’s no competition within themselves. But meanwhile, 65% of the state is registered independent. So there’s just a lot of complacency.

Something I’m very proud of on the City Council (and Jesse Clingan will tell me this all the time) is that I made government more accessible to people in Somerville, because people didn’t think they could even run for office. People get this image in their heads that politicians have these brilliant minds, that they’re so select, they’re elites, and we need these elites to lead us. But we live in a representative democracy, and we need people who actually represent the public to be in these seats. I feel like I’m a representative of the community, and I think more people like that should run for office: more working-class people, more people who have something at stake.

But that also makes it difficult. In this situation, for example, maybe I’m not running for this seat if I didn’t get let go from the federal government and if I hadn’t just graduated from Harvard. It’s good timing for me. Other than that, I have to work to feed my family. So I think that’s the reason a lot of people don’t run.

Ben: You’ve said that the candidates in this race would probably tend to vote the same way. Where’s the daylight between you and the other candidates? What differences should move a voter?

Matt: Everyone’s talking about affordability: housing in particular, but also child care, health care, utility bills, all the things that make it difficult to live around here. If there’s daylight — I know everyone cares about it, but I definitely think that I care more, and I’ve cared longer, and I’ve done more. If there’s daylight between us, it’s the level of commitment to this issue in particular.

I think 70% of the people I talk to at doors will cite affordability as their top issue, and I’ve been the person championing this for decades. It’s not just a talking point. On the national level especially, affordability has become the new catchphrase, but it’s been something I’ve committed my life to. And it is one of those things where you can talk about affordability, and then you get to the State House, and you want to play ball, and you want to be nice with people, and it gets lost in the mix. For me, it’s everything. It’s my reason for going to the State House. So I’m not going to get dissuaded. I’m not going to be swayed and end up working on something else, or let something go because it’s convenient.

Ben: Given that complacency and resistance to change, do you worry you could get elected and then just be frozen out for agitating?

Matt: It’s definitely a possibility that anyone could get frozen out for speaking out. But I would say a few things. One, I often find it’s the person who agitates who gets the most, because with the people who play ball, no one’s afraid of you. It’s, “Oh, this person’s going to play ball, we don’t need to worry about them, we don’t need to give concessions.” As a Somerville city councilor, I agitated when I thought it was necessary, and I think I got more out of administrations than people who were on the inside. And I was also willing to work with people. There are several people who I was in opposition to — or they were in opposition to me — who are supporting my campaign. I think it’s because they know that I’m principled. This isn’t about you. I’m not going to the State House to antagonize the Senate president for no reason. I’m going because there’s an issue I care about, and if you can address that issue, then we’re not going to have a problem.

And something I did in Somerville was encourage more people to run for office. I’m willing to work with anybody. But if people aren’t willing to work with me, then we do have to have elections and get the right people up there. And that’s something I’m willing to do and have been able to do.

Ben: I noticed in your writing a bit of tension between market-rate housing production and things like tenant protections and social housing; production and inclusionary zoning sometimes pull in opposite directions. How do you balance them? Has Somerville struck the right balance, and would you bring the same approach to the state?

Matt: It’s interesting, because I feel like we’re doing the most on both fronts in Somerville. I think we’re definitely doing the most as far as housing production goes. And we’re also very focused on social housing and making sure that low-income people have housing.

Ben: What do you mean by doing the most on housing production?

Matt: I think we’re building the most units. We’ve changed the zoning to allow housing to be built as of right when most cities are fighting that, even three-family housing by right in Somerville, which to some people seems so small, but every other city in the state doesn’t allow it. Most of the state is single-family housing, and we’re three-family housing by right, with dense housing by transit. So I think we’re doing the right thing on the market-rate side.

The 20% inclusionary has become an issue for building some housing, in particular here at Assembly Row, and we’re looking at tax credits and tax relief to allow this housing to get built. We’re at a fork in the road: with the market being the way it is, the interest rates, the building costs, it is becoming difficult, and we were faced with choices: either get rid of the inclusionary zoning, give some tax relief, or not have housing get built. For some people, that third option is totally acceptable, and it’s not to me. I also want the affordable units, so I’m willing to provide some sort of relief. You look at somewhere like Burlington, Vermont: they have a 20% inclusionary rate, and they realized that the housing wasn’t getting built, so they gave some tax credits to incentivize it. We’re working on that right now. So I think I’m clear-eyed on what development needs to happen, and I’m willing to work with people on that. I just do want that affordable housing.

Ben: What does that actually look like? A developer comes to the city and says, “This isn’t penciling. Can we talk about tax breaks?”

Matt: I can’t remember if we’ve approved it yet. We had a public hearing on it that went very well, actually, and it’s called UCH-TIF. We did something similar to what we did in Union Square, where the developers are paying a tax to help pay for the Green Line Extension that came there. If we approve this, then an individual developer could go to the city and work out a deal for tax incentives in exchange for affordable housing. So we may even get more affordable housing than what we currently have, in exchange for some sort of tax relief: ten years of reduced taxes or no taxes, something like that. But it would be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, so we could actually end up getting more out of it.

I would say in Somerville, we’re taking it seriously on both fronts. I think we’ve talked about this: there are the YIMBY people, and then there are the affordability people, and I see them at odds all the time. There are people who think rent control is the only thing we can do: we need to focus all our energy on that, and we can’t allow housing to move forward. I remember years ago, the City Life people protested the YIMBY convention in Boston. They were against the people who were trying to build housing. And I’m like, man, you guys are on the same side. We all care about the same thing. And then some people on the YIMBY side think we can’t have rent control, no stabilization whatsoever: affordability is killing development. There’s something in the middle there. Everyone cares about the same thing; they just have different solutions. And I think we’ve got to pursue all the solutions.

Ben: If projects aren’t penciling at 20% inclusionary and we’re considering tax breaks to fix that, does that suggest 20% is too high? Is there a middle ground — say, 10% — that would pencil without the double hop of IZ plus tax breaks?

Matt: I think it’s the current situation that’s the problem. In my neighborhood in East Somerville, on East Broadway, I zoned everything for five to six stories, and I have several projects there that got built right away. And then the building costs and the interest rates went up, so now we’re in this situation. So I think it fluctuates. I’ve actually spoken to the planning department about this (this isn’t something that’s real yet, so I don’t want to advertise it), but maybe a fluctuating scale of inclusionary housing based on what the market needs. Having a realistic expectation. But then you also need some transparency from developers. You need to know: what’s your rate of return, how much money are you trying to make? In some cases, developers need a 5% rate of return on their investment. Some people need seven. So you need some sort of transparency on that in order to work out a deal.

Ben: If the rent control ballot question had gone through, where would you have stood?

Matt: I supported the question, even though it was not what I would have put on the ballot. One of my problems (and this is the problem with the State House and with ballot questions) is that ballot questions can often be rigid, and the State House often doesn’t respect them anyway. So it’s this weird situation where I have to tell people to vote for something that I don’t think is perfect, knowing that the State House may kill it completely or will definitely amend it.

I think about the marijuana ballot question from years ago. It took them something like four years to implement that policy, and it looked nothing like what they originally passed. I think about safe nurse staffing limits. That was something people had really legitimate concerns about: how is this going to impact the medical industry? And I supported it, because nurses had been fighting for years for some sort of safe staffing limits, and they were not being respected by the medical industry or the State House. So they took it to the ballot. That unfortunately failed, but I think if it had passed, the state legislature would have been forced to come up with a solution.

I think it’s the same with rent control. It was not how I would have passed rent control, but if it got to the State House, I think they would have been compelled to do something about it. And I would have supported something similar to what Michelle Wu did: a fairly high cap on rent increases, allowing new development to get built, exempting small property owners, something that prevents rent gouging. We have a guy in the city who famously got a 90% increase on his rent. When I tell people that, they say, “How is that legal?” And I say, well, because we don’t have rent control. So I’d like to prevent something like that, but also still allow development to happen and not burden small property owners.

Ben: Any lessons from the way the triple-decker changes went? We re-legalized triple deckers with an affordable third unit and the proximity rule, then had to roll that back to make them viable.

Matt: I think it’s similar to the 20%, and it’s also a lesson in incremental change. I had always supported three-family housing by right. If you go back years to when we were proposing this, that was the big sticking point in the zoning changes. It wasn’t the squares or the housing by transit; it was the residential neighborhoods. And there was a public and very private push to exclude all residential neighborhoods, which is the entire city of Somerville. I was on the side of three-family by right everywhere, and I was in the minority on that. There were people who were actively opposed, and then there were people who were quietly opposed.

So I proposed this compromise: what about an affordable third unit with a really high AMI? So it’s more middle-income, and maybe more palatable for somebody who wants to build that housing. We got that to pass. And then there were also some amendments that I really didn’t like, which basically said you can build a triple decker, but only next to another triple decker. I went along with that because the votes were there, not because I supported it. This is what we were getting out of it, and I still got some three-family units.

I’ll back up even further and say I remember one councilor was afraid that we’d have thousands of affordable units in the city. And I said, that would be a great problem. I would love for that problem to exist. More than likely, we’re going to get five or six units out of this, and we’ve got zero. So we did the affordable third unit knowing that it would probably limit the amount of housing, but that’s what we were going to get out of it. And then the city came up with this plan to require a housing lottery for that third unit, and I challenged that publicly and said, this is ridiculous. No small property owner is going to have it dictated to them who they can rent to. This has always been about, “Oh, my son-in-law wants to move into the apartment” — and now you’re not going to be allowed to have a family member in there? It made no sense, and it made it so that we had zero housing built.

Then there was turnover on the council. All of the people who opposed the third unit by right left the council. We had the MBTA Communities Act. And we actually had a moment when city staff kind of implied that we could do what Marblehead did and just zone an area and not build housing at all, or we could do something real. I was the one who said, let’s do something real. Let’s get this third unit by right done, finally. It addresses the problem that we created, and it addresses the challenge that the MBTA Communities Act gave us to build more housing. So I was happy to move forward and progress.

The affordable third unit was a compromise; I don’t think in the moment we knew that we weren’t going to get any housing at all. It failed, and we adjusted. I think you have to acknowledge when something doesn’t work. That’s important, especially around housing. People don’t want to acknowledge that something’s not working, and I’m just here to get something done. So that’s how we got to where we are.

Ben: If you had a magic wand that could get anything passed in the Senate, what’s your top one or two?

Matt: If I had a magic wand, I would just invest billions of dollars in housing, and have social housing, for example: truly affordable housing. I know that’s not going to happen. I’ll take a few hundred million; I think that’d be good. But I do think the government has a role in building housing. If we had unlimited funds, that’s what I would do. We don’t have unlimited funds; that’s why I also favor the market-rate side.

Ben: Specifically, the government should construct lots of housing and rent it out, or sell it?

Matt: I like the idea of social housing. I want to explore it: housing that is rent-controlled in itself. It’s a European style of affordable housing. What I like about it is that it’s all income levels, and you don’t have to constantly report your income. With an affordable housing unit, if you suddenly get a raise, they’ll kick you out of your housing. You try to move up in the world, and you can get pushed out of affordable units. This is more community-owned. It’s all income levels, and it helps pay for itself over time, because you have multiple income streams going in there, and all the money goes back into building the housing itself instead of us constantly investing more. So I think we have to think of a better way to build affordable housing. I think about projects in Somerville where we’ve sunk tens of millions of dollars, and they keep needing more money.

I actually took a class on social housing at Harvard, and I wrote a paper about it for Gilman Square, and now we’re building social housing in Gilman Square. So I’ll take a very small amount of credit for that. The mayor put it out there. One of the things I learned from that class was that back when public housing was getting built in the twenties and thirties, the real estate industry did not want middle-income housing to be made by the government, because they didn’t want to be in competition with it. So we focused on exclusively low-income housing, and what we got out of that were the projects, which are really not places that people want to live permanently. It was always meant to be a temporary living place for people to get on their feet, and they become ghettos, places that we’re sinking money into all the time. So I’d like to come up with a more community-focused affordable housing. If I had unlimited funds, that’s what I would spend it on. But again, knowing that we don’t have unlimited funds, we need to allow the market to do its part too.

Ben: What would be your second wish?

Matt: Unlimited funds? I would do universal child care, because it’s economically necessary at this point. I have a four-year-old myself. I’m 45; I had a child late, because that’s when I could afford to have a kid. And I see a lot of people either choosing not to have children or leaving their jobs to have kids, and both of those impact the job market. We’re losing talent. We’re losing young people in particular. Thirty thousand people left the state last year, and a lot of them are younger people with educations and good jobs, and they don’t see a future here. Part of that future is having a family and having a house. That’s the American dream, and it’s becoming impossible in Massachusetts.

This is something I am pursuing, and I think it will be expensive and necessary in order to keep people here, and in order to have people in the future who take care of us when we’re older. We need some sort of child care vouchers, tax credits for people, ways to make it easier to provide affordable child care. Because if we don’t do that, we’re just going to keep losing people. And I think that’s necessary for all income levels too, because there are really low-income people who desperately need child care, but there are people in the middle too, where it’s like, man, this is college tuition to send your kid to daycare. And if you’re spending money on that, you’re not spending it in the economy or somewhere else.

Ben: Is there an issue where there’s a clear difference between you and what Pat Jehlen has been doing in this seat?

Matt: Interesting. I’ll say the thing that I’m similar with Pat on is that she’s a person who fought on the inside and the outside, and I think that’s what the district expects. They expect someone who’s going to challenge authority but also get things done. And I think of the field of candidates, I’m the person who’s most similar to that.

I do think the affordability thing is a difference between us. Somernova, for example, was something that I strongly supported, because it was upzoning, and it brought development into the community, and it brought affordable housing. So I think that’s a good example of my willingness to accept change in exchange for the betterment of the community. And that was a process that took a long time for me to get to, because growing up, I was often the person who didn’t like the change happening in the community. I eventually had to accept that and realize that we need to harness the change to better the community. I think I am the strongest candidate on affordability of everyone associated with the state senate race.

Ben: You’re such a strong Somerville guy. What have you learned campaigning in Medford, Cambridge, and Winchester that’s shifted your policy views?

Matt: It’s enhanced my policy views, and it’s — what’s the word I’m looking for? — it’s validating to me. Also sad. I go to Winchester, for example. A lot of people told me, “Cambridge, Winchester, they’re not going to hear your message. They don’t care about affordability. It’s bougie,” I was told. And it was funny, because my first day knocking doors in Winchester, I’m knocking on a door across the street from a country club. They literally have a gilded fence. I just left my mail there — okay, I’m not even going to reach this person. The next door I knock on is a woman who said she can’t afford to live in the city she grew up in. Her son is going to graduate from college, and he said, “I’m going to have to leave the state because I can’t afford to live here.” And that’s a message I heard a lot in Winchester. I’ve heard it in Cambridge.

It was validating, because this is why I’m running: so I can represent the entire district. And Medford in particular — I’ve always had an affinity for Medford, because I know so many people who moved from Somerville to Medford. I grew up with Medford people. I think Medford is still a working-class community, more working-class than Somerville and Cambridge at this point. So I would love to represent them. I have focused so rigidly on affordability because I know that it’s a universal issue, and hearing it in different neighborhoods has confirmed that to me.

Ben: Say you’re elected, and it’s the end of your first term. What’s the best way to judge your performance? What would tell you you succeeded?

Matt: After one term? I definitely have to build relationships with people, so that’s important. I would like to get some modest changes immediately, something like changing the building code. Or, right now they’re talking about maybe passing two-family housing by right; I would increase it to three. That wouldn’t be that crazy. So I think there are some small wins we can get in there in the short term while we build toward longer-term goals. Building relationships with people, being an advocate in general, just being a voice for these issues is really important, because even though people are talking about it, there’s no sense of urgency whatsoever on this issue. So I would hope to increase the voice of this issue, build relationships with people, and get some good wins within the first term.

Ben: Anything we didn’t cover that you think is worth having in here?

Matt: I just feel like we’re running a really strong race. We’re an underdog, but I think the message is getting out there. Everyone’s talking about affordability, but I think I’m the most believable on the subject, and it’s because of decades of commitment and challenging people, challenging government to do more. I think that’s what’s really lacking right now: the willingness to really push on these issues.

1. Tom Hopcroft has withdrawn.