Neil Miller
LightNews LightNews
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Neil Miller
@neilsmiller.bsky.social
89 followers 270 following 150 posts
Former federal gov. data scientist, urbanist, Neilchik
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
Powerful letter to reflect on before you go to vote.

Many candidates are running to roll back the progress Cambridge has made - they are explicitly pro-exclusionary zoning.

A vote for ABC's pro-housing slate will help Cambridge go forward, not back.

www.cambridgeday.com/2025/11/03/c...
I’m proud that our city has faced the resulting housing crisis realistically, and with an eye to equity and sustainability. Cambridge started with the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay, which has opened new opportunities for lower-cost housing, with over 800 homes in the pipeline. This year, Cambridge passed a Multi-family Zoning Ordinance – a landmark law that received national attention as it created possibilities for multi-family housing citywide. Among the results of the lowered barriers in this law: a 4-unit lot in mid-Cambridge will become home for 30 households; a one-story retail building with three stores near Porter, fixed at that size and use since 1894, can now become three stores plus 71 homes; a deteriorating historic structure near Harvard Sq. is on track to be restored and maintained because it can share its large lot with housing and a small hotel. Cambridge accomplished all this with planning, deliberation and resident involvement, although not everyone’s policy preferences could be adopted. I expect there will be much more to come as we work our way out of the long-term housing shortage. This is what some Council candidates want to repeal. We’ve seen what happens when conservatives try to take their country back. Some of our local conservatives have announced their intention to take our city back – to the exclusionary policies from the last century. To keep Cambridge on an equitable and inclusionary path, I’m voting for the slate endorsed by A Better Cambridge: Burhan Azeem, Dana Bullister, Mark McGovern, Ned Melanson, Sumbul Siddiqui, Denise Simmons, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, and Ayesha Wilson. For Cambridge’s sake, I hope you will, too.
November 3, 2025 at 5:09 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
#CambMA EV+mail turnout is slightly higher in 2025 vs 2023, as of Saturday before election.
Increases in precincts covering Alewife, Rindge, Port, Kendall, CX Crossing, some mid-Camb.
Decreases in Wellington-Harrington, lower C-port
@johnhawkinson.bsky.social
Cambridge 2025 vs 2023 early votes
docs.google.com
November 1, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
@ayannapressley.bsky.social is a nationwide progressive leader who's saying YES in her backyard to proven pro-housing champions! Congratulations Mayor Simmons, VM McGovern, @councillorsiddiqui.bsky.social, Ayesha Wilson, @votejivan.bsky.social, @burhanazeem.bsky.social: all 6 ABC-endorsed incumbents
October 28, 2025 at 4:15 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Your Friendly Neighborhood Puppet Master
cascadeanalytics.substack.com/p/friendly-n...
Me (wearing red plaid shirt) leaving a flyer at a door
October 8, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
Canvass TODAY and TOMORROW for our pro-housing slate! More info and sign up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Hear from our volunteers in 2023 about why they canvassed. Come join us and share your "Why?" for our next newsletter!
Two volunteers Sophia and Camilla from 2023 talk about why they canvass.
September 20, 2025 at 1:23 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
A housing proposal at 84-86 Ellery St, #CambMA was blocked in part b/c architect Eleanor Raymond was born there.

In 1981, Raymond said "I grew up alone by myself".

"No, the house I grew up in was not important to me. I got out of it just as soon as I could."
www.newspapers.com/newspage/436...
The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts
Get this The Boston Globe page for free from Friday, October 2, 1981 THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1981 47 The ethic of Eleanor Raymond ELEANOR RAYMOND Selected Ar.... Edition of The Boston Glob...
www.newspapers.com
August 30, 2025 at 1:48 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Police Planning Places for People: how "stakeholder engagement" inflates reduces livability and increases the cost of affordable housing in Massachusetts

open.substack.com/pub/cascadea...
Police Planning Places for People
"Stakeholder engagement" inflates cost of affordable housing in Massachusetts
open.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 12:48 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Freudian slip? "Chapter 40B has a long history of succession Massachusetts" - home rule must really be important in some places.
www.mass.gov/info-details...
Webpage with highlighted text: "Chapter 40B has a long history of succession Massachusetts"
July 29, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
jfsheehan.bsky.social
My friend @neilsmiller.bsky.social had this excellent piece published in the Dorchester Reporter on how to get MA's common public benefits app moving. I only just got around to reading it but wish I had earlier! It's very accessible, clear writing on a vital but often wonky topic. Check it out!
Opinion— Let’s get moving on ‘common app’ for public benefits | Dorchester Reporter
Massachusetts wants to cut paperwork for people who are applying to public benefit programs. Ironically, the state is stuck in its own paperwork, harming thousands of Dorchester neighbors. Despite the...
www.dotnews.com
July 14, 2025 at 9:05 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Boston cares!
@bostonchildrens.bsky.social Blood Center sent out urgent need for platelets yesterday afternoon, and they've been full all day today.

Make an appointment to donate: www.bostonchildrens.org/halfpints
Young man with glasses smiling with IV in background
July 11, 2025 at 7:27 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
@mbta.com @mbtaslowzonebot.bsky.social
Shuttles replaced red line through Kendall-- ok, great. But now the train broke at Kendall, my wife and many others are stuck there. It's late, please help everyone get home!
July 11, 2025 at 2:35 AM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
Powerful tour on Underground Railroad and abolitionist history in Boston @ Museum of African-American History. 1854: Bostonians stormed the courthouse where Anthony Burns was being held under the Fugitive Slave Act. May his legacy be a blessing for us today.
img: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Burns
A portrait of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whose arrest and trial under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. A bust portrait of the twenty-four-year-old Burns, "Drawn by Barry from a daguereotype [sic] by Whipple and Black," is surrounded by scenes from his life. These include (clockwise from lower left): the sale of the youthful Burns at auction, a whipping post with bales of cotton, his arrest in Boston on May 24, 1854, his escape from Richmond on shipboard, his departure from Boston escorted by federal marshals and troops, Burns's "address" (to the court?), and finally Burns in prison. Copyrighting works such as prints and pamphlets under the name of the subject (here Anthony Burns) was a common abolitionist practice. This was no doubt the case in this instance, since by 1855 Burns had in fact been returned to his owner in Virginia.
June 19, 2025 at 10:32 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
An anonymous Trump official said they were ending $100 million in contracts with Harvard. Dozens of outlets quoted them. I did the math, and that's not possible. The most "damage" that can be done to Harvard is half of that amount.

New:
open.substack.com/pub/cascadea...
Graphic by Neil Miller: Terminated Contracts Would Cost Harvard Well Under $100 Million. $46.7 Million in Total Outlays ($ Already Paid to Harvard). $89.5 Million Total Obligations (Planned Contract Spending to Harvard). $101.1 Million Maximum Award Amount.
June 16, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
dotnews.bsky.social
New in the Dorchester Reporter's opinion section: @neilsmiller.bsky.social says Massachusetts is way behind on implementing a 2022 law intended to cut paperwork for people applying for public benefits like SNAP. www.dotnews.com/2025/let-s-g...
A screenshot from a Mass DTA social media promotion related to the SNAP program.
June 5, 2025 at 4:31 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
In 2023, Mass. allocated millions to build a 'common app' for benefits like SNAP and MassHealth. The $ is still sitting there, stuck in contracting purgatory, and the work hasn't even started yet. 10,000s of families eligible for SNAP now go without

cascadeanalytics.substack.com/p/friends-wi...
Friends Without Public Benefits
Broken contracting leaves MA families mired in paperwork
cascadeanalytics.substack.com
June 4, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
From a new Cambridge-area neighbor. Tired of being devoured? Donate to our pro-housing movement secure.actblue.com/donate/abc20... so the apartments stop hunting you.
Text of poem On apartment hunting By Henri Antikainen Apartment hunting is commonly misunderstood. It is the apartment that hunts you. It is out there, with its perfect square footage, functional layout, incredibly high rent that still, everything considered, is somehow kind of a deal, one that you think you should immediately pounce on but which in fact pounces on you, as long as your credit history is impeccable and you have a three months of rent to commit, the equivalent of the aspect and smell of a slightly sick animal that stands apart of the pack, perhaps asking for predatory mercy. Relentlessly the apartment has lied in wait, at the end of a cavern of scrolling, its eyes aglint in the dark. It devours multiple victims at once, and spits out all apart from one; it only has taste for your money, the contemporary equivalent of blood. The apartment, having found you, its victim, lies gorged, stuffed, its small closets (if any) bulging, things coming to a still under the bed. Once a year it shifts, turns on its side, digests you further, a process also known as a rent hike. This could go on forever, or at least until the day you die, when the apartment again emerges on the market from the cocoon that it had made of you, now a carnivorous butterfly worth multiples of what it was when you found it or rather when it found you. It is you who made it into what it is now, though like of a lunch on a random Wednesday, no memory remains of you. It is, again, a deal.
May 2, 2025 at 9:36 PM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/cascadea...

Trying something new: a blog based on my 3 years as a gov data scientist, diving into the guts of management policy. First off, five red flags you can recognize in solicitations everywhere, OR, how DOD is spending $40M on a website that makes websites
Alchemy for aliens – 5 solicitation sins wasting our money
To find waste, read the RFPs
open.substack.com
April 24, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
dansprague.bsky.social
@cambridgemass.bsky.social has a housing crisis. Yet unaccountable "Neighborhood Conservation Districts" (NCDs) run by the city drastically decrease housing construction and increase down-converted unit losses compared to equivalent parcels outside NCDs.

dan-sprague.github.io/2025/03/30/ncd
Neighborhood Conservation Districts Suppress Housing in Cambridge, MA
Stories of variation around a mean.
dan-sprague.github.io
March 31, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
Central Square was blessed by Keytar Bear last night @universalhub.com @cambridgeday.bsky.social

Let's level up Porter Square too. More homes in the square = more neighbors hanging out = more Keytar Bear. Don't let the NIMBYs take this away from you.

Keytar Bear in Porter Square! #campaignpromise
A person in a bear outfit playing keytar with street lights behind them.
March 13, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
abciepac.org
Weigh in on the future of Porter Square and North Mass! Inclusionary housing, and all homes, ARE a public good -- let the city know you support at least 12 stories on Mass Ave and 18 stories in Porter by right 🧵
Illustrative draft with buildings titled: How could Porter Square evolve over the next 15 years.
March 12, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
bostonfedunionists.bsky.social
BOSTON! Friday, 5:30 PM, fight back with Federal workers. Rally at the JFK Building to stop the firings and stop the cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
Poster for "Federal Workers & Friends Fight Back" rally in Boston. Friday, March 14, 5:30PM at JFK Building, 15 Sudbury, Government Center. Sign says "STOP the firings, STOP restructuring, NO CUTS to Medicare or Social Security"
March 12, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
blkahn.bsky.social
literally nothing can prepare you for this EPA press release www.epa.gov/newsreleases...
EPA Press Office Fact Checks the Washington Post’s Coverage of Waste & Abuse of Taxpayer Dollars | US EPA
EPA News Release: EPA Press Office Fact Checks the Washington Post’s Coverage of Waste & Abuse of Taxpayer Dollars
www.epa.gov
March 7, 2025 at 1:44 AM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
I created the Sole Source Spotter to catch waste and corruption in Federal contracting: neilsmiller.github.io/Contract_opp...

E.g. the Navy plans to give Leidos a 5-year sole source contract to support air traffic software that Leidos itself developed, continuing a *previous* 5-year no-bid contract
Sole Source Spotter
neilsmiller.github.io
March 5, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Neil Miller
alfredtwu.com
In many ways it's fitting that the showdown between monarchy and democracy ends up being over NYC congestion pricing.

Cities are where the power of kings were first challenged, and few things are more fundamental to government than control of public space.

The cameras are staying on!
A cartoon with a sign that looks like a classic NYC no parking sign but is modified to say "No King Any Time", above a cartoon showing a cybertruck with a crown on it running over speed bumps and sawhorse barricades labeled Congress, Executive Branch, and Courts. It is stopped in front of bollards with a Congestion Pricing sign above it. In the background on the left is the Washington DC skyline with tire tracks coming out of a building. On the right behind the congestion pricing sign are the Statue of Liberty in front of the Jersey City skyline, an NYC walkup apartment with a bodega, people on bikes and walking, the Manhattan skyline, a subway train, and a bus in a bus only lane, and Pizza Rat.
February 20, 2025 at 4:42 AM
neilsmiller.bsky.social
For any procurement pros, housing advocates and transit fans, sharing a proposal I just submitted.
𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝘁𝘀: 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀
lnkd.in/gZ5BFquN
This focuses on Federal technology solicitations, but also applicable to planning and transportation RFPs
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
February 14, 2025 at 7:07 PM