The Fair Housing Commission recently held an online community meeting to discuss several issues of public interest.

The Somerville Fair Housing Commission discussed how to inform voters, reduce barriers for housing voucher holders, and address criminal record discrimination in an online public meeting last Thursday.

The City of Somerville aims to hold the Preliminary Election on September 16, followed by a Municipal Election on November 4. Voters can pick candidates for mayor, councilor at large, councilor Ward 7, and school committee Ward 3, according to the city’s web page.

Commissioners Patrice Faulkner and Dennis Fischman sent questionnaires to mayoral, ward, and city council candidates to clarify where they stand on fair housing issues. This year’s responses, along with responses from years before, are on the City of Somerville’s Fair Housing Commission web page now.

“We wanted to spur thinking about fair housing among the candidates and provide information on those issues to voters,” Fischman said. “Some of them responded at great length, and some of them responded very tersely,” but, he added, “we did not edit anybody’s responses.”

Shannon Lawler, a program specialist in the city’s housing division, suggested the commission start working closely with the city’s Home Improvement Program to address challenges for housing voucher holders.

She said case managers at the Somerville Homeless Coalition noticed landlords denying voucher holders. The landlords are attributing the rejections to prior evictions or poor credit scores, she said. But, “what the case managers are seeing,” she added, “is that it’s really based on the fact that they have a voucher.”

Lawler said case managers also saw voucher holders struggling to lease units that require deleading.

The Permanent Supportive Housing Program at the coalition requires a lead inspection. That inspection makes older family-sized units, many of which still have lead paint, difficult to lease to voucher holders.

Lawler said that deleading is costly for landlords, “especially if they’re not in the Home Improvement Program, which has a limited amount of money.” The program gives loans to property owners to help them cover lead abatement costs, but it prioritizes hazardous scenarios, like pregnant occupants and children under 6. 

Commissioner Rona Fischman added that deleading takes a long time, during which landlords are stuck with vacant space. She said, “When there’s a barrier that actually has real-world consequences, we do want to make it easier for landlords.”

The commission also considered options for protecting housing applicants who have criminal records. Lawler laid out three options.

The commission could refrain from making changes.

They could add criminal record holders as a protected class into the Fair Housing Ordinance. 

Or, they could create a Fair Chance Ordinance that puts criminal record holders into a protected class for both housing and employment, but it would be separate from the Fair Housing Ordinance.  

We’re really only at the beginning of exploring the options, Dennis Fischman said.  

He added that landlords can prejudicially look for criminal records in applicants with a certain race, transgender or veteran status, while not looking into applicants from different groups.

“Like the high school slogan says, ‘Somerville leads the way,’” he said. “Whether or not we’re in a position to enforce things, we can be in a position to set a norm.”

The Fair Housing Commission plans to talk with Gloria Huangpu, a community engagement planner, in the next meeting on Sept. 25, to further address housing barriers and discrimination.

For weekly updates about fair housing, visit the Somerville Fair Housing Commission Facebook page.