“The city has failed to put pressure on the universities on key issues, especially around housing,” candidate Nadeem Mazen said.

According to candidate James Williamson, MIT and Harvard house only 38 and 45 percent of their graduate students, respectively.

“[The universities] should have a goal of housing 100 percent of their graduate students,” Williamson said. “They own the land. They have the money.”

Harvard’s Institutional Master Plan for development in Allston, which was approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority last week, provides graduate school housing units within a planned basketball facility. Another Harvard project in Allston, the residential and retail development at the corner of North Harvard Street and Western Avenue, will also include housing units.

Candidates say that the spillover of graduate students from university housing to rental units puts pressure on low-income families in Cambridge competing for cheaper rents and shrinks the already constrained housing stock.

“Two or three students can pay more than a low-income family for rent,” said candidate Dennis Carlone. “This is adding a real burden to the [area around MIT].”

With the election less than two weeks away, candidates disagree on the steps that must be taken to improve the stock of affordable housing in Cambridge. While some candidates support an increase in the required percentage of affordable housing units within a building from 15 to 18 percent, others are wary that such a measure would provide a further disincentive to housing developers, similar to the effect of rent control.

Williamson spoke of the opportunity to increase the inclusionary housing percentage while the market is “so hot.”

Leslie, however, said he is less supportive of an automatic hike in the required inclusionary housing percentage and said he has no plans for pushing for its increase.

“It’s an oversimplification to think that raising the inclusionary zoning is going to increase affordable housing without any side effects,” Leslie said.

Leslie touched on a housing paradox that has beset Cambridge since before the advent of rent control in the ‘70s—with rising housing prices, the city’s low-income families require regulation to guarantee affordable housing options, yet excessive regulation deters development and leads to a stagnation of the housing stock.

“The only way to truly bring down all rates is to hurt the economy, to make it less attractive to live here,” Leslie said.

What the candidates do agree on, however, is that housing represents a problem that must be addressed.

“If we don’t start investing now and working on a master plan for Cambridge, then we’re never going to achieve anything, and income disparity will become larger and larger,” said Smith.

—Antonio Coppola, Nikki D. Erlick, John P. Finnegan, Caroline C. Hunsicker, Jennifer Leung, Anja C. Nilsson, Laura K. Reston, Henry Shah, and Maia R. Silber contributed reporting to this story.

—Staff writer Marco J. Barber Grossi can be reached at mbarbergrossi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @Marco_JBG.

—Staff writer Sonali Y. Salgado can be reached at sonali.salgado@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @SonaliSalgado16.