Candidate Profile: Kit Collins, Medford City Council

MEDFORD, MA — Kit Collins is one of 14 candidates vying for seven seats on the Medford City Council in the Nov. 2 municipal election. There are also contested races for mayor and school committee.

Medford Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles this week.

Collins is a freelance illustrator, muralist and public artist. After graduating from Tufts University in 2015, she worked part-time jobs in e-commerce, museums and food service while building her business.

Are you running for office in Medford? Contact Alex Newman at alex.newman@patch.com for information on being featured in a candidate profile and submitting campaign announcements to Medford Patch.

Age (as of Election Day)

27

Position Sought

City Council

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Family

I live with my partner in South Medford. I’m close with my parents and siblings who live in Boston, Ann Arbor, and upstate New York.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No.

Education

I graduated from Tufts University in 2015 with a B.A. in Peace & Justice Studies.

Occupation

I work as a full-time freelance illustrator, muralist and public artist. For my first few years after graduating from Tufts University, I worked part-time jobs in e-commerce, museums, and food service while building up my client base and getting my business off the ground.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

N/a

Campaign website

kit4medford.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I am seeking elected office because I want to help strengthen the future of my community. There is a lot that we can do through the office of the City Council to improve housing affordability, shore up infrastructure and city services, and ensure a safe, stable, climate-resilient future here in Medford. I’m running for City Council want to be a part of a proactive, progressive local government that will be transparent, responsive, and do everything it can to improve life for all those who call Medford home.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

I believe there are several pressing issues facing our city, but to pick just one I would go with the issue of housing affordability. As a community member, a volunteer on the Mutual Aid Medford & Somerville hotline, and now as a candidate, I have heard stories from so many people in Medford who have had loved ones priced out of our community, or fear that they too are on the brink of being priced out. I’ve talked to elders and lifelong residents who can’t afford to downsize in their own community, renters like me who fear they’re one rent increase away from having to move out of the city, as well as people who’d like to purchase a home of their own but can’t find anything close to their price range.

Another thing I hear repeatedly, when I talk to residents, is that people really treasure the fact that Medford is a community that includes and welcomes people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. So we must make sure that we are building and protecting housing that is appropriate for every income level. We must make sure that the needs of Medford residents take precedence over the interests of upscale developers. If we don’t, we will see even more displacement, and we will lose the richness and diversity that is an asset to our city.

The good news is that we have many solutions that we can deploy to address the housing crisis; we just have to be willing to use them. If elected, I will work with my colleagues on the City Council to pass a Housing Production Plan, establish an Affordable Housing Trust, and create an Office of Housing Stability within City Hall whose sole mission is to support residents staying in their homes or finding a stable home in Medford.

We can’t wave a magic wand and change greater Boston’s housing market overnight. But what we can do is use planning, zoning, developer-City relationships and City Hall resources to implement measures that will keep Medford a city that can work for everyone.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

It goes without saying that we all bring with us variations in experience, background, and policy priorities. One particular I like to note is that I’m a renter in South Medford, because currently there are no renters on City Council, nor any Councilors that live in South Medford. In a City where over 40% of residents rent their homes, it’s only correct to have proportional representation on City Council; and all neighborhoods should have a voice and a champion in City government. (To support these goals going forward, I will support a City Charter Review, and transitioning to ward-based City Council representation.)

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)?

I respect our current City Councilors and think that they have acted in good faith across a range of issues. However, we can do better when it comes to meeting the issues facing Medford with the level of urgency that they require.

From housing, to infrastructure, to climate, to food insecurity, these are problems are affecting Medford residents right now, and the City Council must should act accordingly. If elected, I won’t treat any of these issues like future problems where we can afford to defer action.

People of all ages and stages of life are already being priced out of our community, and facing hardships that stem from the chronic underfunding of our public infrastructure and city services: from inaccessible sidewalks and dangerous roads, to public school resources that aren’t sufficient to support every student the way they deserve to be supported. We must work towards a city budget that prioritizes our values, pass a Housing Production Plan, establish an Affordable Housing Trust, and chart a path to moving up our carbon net-zero goals for the city. And, during the darkest days of the pandemic, we should have passed a local eviction moratorium to help protect individual renters and overall public health.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Our local officials, school staff, and Board of Health should be lauded for their tireless and dedicated work in the midst of the tragic and unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic.

I think that our failure to implement a local eviction moratorium was a failure of public health, and a missed opportunity to support vulnerable renters during the darkest days of the pandemic. After the state eviction moratorium expired in October 2020, many of our neighboring communities, including Malden and Somerville, instituted local eviction bans so that renters suffering financial hardship from the circumstances of the pandemic would not be evicted due to falling behind on their rent. These eviction moratoria were passed against the context of new streams of emergency rental assistance, so that landlords would not be left in the lurch. Unfortunately, despite calls for action, the City Council did not recommend an eviction moratorium to the Mayor’s Office, and the Mayor’s Office did not implement one.

An eviction moratorium is an especially important tool for the whole community during a pandemic because after people are evicted from their homes, they often have no choice but to stay in shelters or doubling up with other households – which is in opposition to the goal is to keep overall infection and virus-transmission rates down, especially during winter months.

In addition, it would have been an opportunity to remove at least this one anxiety from the minds of renters who were experiencing financial hardship and feeling in danger of losing their homes. I would have stood with those constituents and City Councilors who were strongly advocating for a local moratorium.

In the wake of this pandemic, we must seize the opportunity to shore up our public health resources so that in the future, we will be better able to nimbly and effectively respond with testing, contact tracing, onsite and home-visit vaccine distribution, public health communication, and the enforcement of mask mandates and other helpful measures.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

We must pass a city budget that puts our values first: Full funding for our public schools should be non-negotiable. We must sustainably invest in all our public infrastructure, from safer streets, to fully-accessible sidewalks and crosswalks, to better bike infrastructure. We must maintain our public buildings. We must shore up our city services so as to better address hunger and housing instability, and expand language accessibility and translation resources, so that everyone can fully and conveniently participate in civic life.

In addition, we must respond to the threat of climate change with urgency, because we are already feeling the effects of increasingly extreme storms, flooding, and heat during summer months. I support a net-zero or carbon-neutral requirement for new developments, expanding incentives for property owners in Medford to lower the carbon footprint of their properties, liaising with state partners to expand and improve public transit access, and establishing climate resiliency plans for each neighborhood.

I have always felt safe and secure here in Medford, and we must make sure that the same holds true for every single person in Medford. I will advocate for improvements to our public safety response by establishing alternative crisis response and mental health crisis response teams, so that we can more effectively respond to and support people in times of urgent need.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

As a small business owner and art contractor, I have to be very organized, communicate well, and be accountable to a diverse array of collaborators and clients. I see these professional skills as also applicable to the role of City Councilor, which also requires one to be communicative, responsive, ask good questions, and reconcile different needs and perspectives into workable solutions.

I think that liaising with constituents should be a key part of being a City Councilor, and I am ready to make myself available to any community member to hear about their concerns. In my campaign for City Council, I have prioritized one-on-one conversations with residents more than anything else, so that I could connect with residents in every neighborhood to hear about their issues and priorities directly. Remaining available and reaching out to residents is something I plan to continue if I am elected.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

I read this a while ago: "Don’t pickle it." It means don’t wait until some future moment to act on a generous impulse, give a gift, say something kind, or tell someone what they mean to you. Why wait? Do it now!

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I would like voters to know that I am always happy to talk to anyone about any issue facing our community, even if we disagree about it. If we’re not on the same page, I promise I will keep an open mind and try my very best to understand where you are coming from, and likewise explain to you the things that inform my outlook and my opinion. I am committed to leaving things better than I found them and I will work in good faith with anyone who feels the same way.