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(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)
Every year the cost of housing marches upward, driving families out of Somerville. In response, Mayor Wilson has promised to support the creation of subsidized affordable housing in Somerville, especially in transit-rich neighborhoods and in projects that exceed the 20% affordability minimum required by our Inclusionary Zoning rules. Right now, our community has a proposal for a building that combines transit access with greater affordability: Copper Mill’s Davis Square project.
It promises 126 new subsidized Affordable homes, 25% of all homes on the site. That is more than the 117 newly built Affordable homes that we have managed to build through non-profits in the last decade. That is 126 more families that can remain in Somerville instead of being pushed out.
The builders have indicated through their Mass Housing application that started the 40B process that they intend to use no public money. With a possible budgetary shortfall this year, it would be useful to not stress our fiscal position. Copper Mill is able to use only private money because of the comparatively higher rents of the other homes in the proposed building. Simpler financing means that the project can proceed quickly, which means getting those homes sooner.
Compare that to another active 40B project: 299 Broadway. It has taken almost 6 years for this particular iteration to reach its current demolition phase and likely another 2–3 years to build out the homes. That is almost a decade for just 132 Affordable homes. That project only happened because of complex financing, direct government funding, and tax relief from the city. We cannot keep moving that slowly and earnestly claim to be solving our housing crisis.
Often, helping to solve our housing problem can induce some displacement of its own. For the Copper Mill project, no families are being displaced. The project team has also made an active effort to mitigate their commercial displacement by promising the Burren and Dragon Pizza a brand new home on the same site.
The Copper Mill proposal is by no means perfect, but we are excited by how good this proposal is. It will mean a lot of affordable homes for Somervillians on a shorter timeline. We need a city government that steps up to enable Affordable Housing. A city government that can efficiently get through the process and make the housing we need to keep our families here.
Above all, we should keep in mind that the housing shortage is urgent: people need these homes as soon as possible, and housing delayed is housing denied.
Aaron Weber
Joshua Michel
Andre Comella
Beatrix Klebe
Matthew McMillan
Ben Lappen
Klaus Schultz
Jeff Byrnes
Ashish Shrestha
Ben Orenstein
Daniel Wong
Jonathan Cohen
Sienna Durbin
Scott Istvan
Elliot Borenstein
Michael Leukam
PJ Kim-Santos
Sara Oaklander
Somerville YIMBY
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The last thing Davis Square needs is a 26-story building with 500+ apartments and no parking.
The article is a clear push for developer-led density under the guise of affordability. It treats the housing crisis as a simple “supply vs. demand” math problem while ignoring the complex reality of infrastructure costs, institutional rent-fixing, and the long-term economic impact on a neighborhood like Davis Square. By focusing entirely on the “126 affordable units,” the authors gloss over the fact that these are subsidized by hundreds of high-end, luxury apartments that will set a new, permanent rent floor for the entire area. This isn’t a strategy for neighborhood stability; it is an “optimization” of Davis Square for institutional investors who use algorithmic software to keep prices high, regardless of how many units are added to the spreadsheet.
The authors ignore the reality of demographic churn, where injecting a massive wave of high-earning residents fundamentally shifts the local economy. People don’t compete for housing in a vacuum; they compete based on what they can afford. When you drop 375+ luxury units into a single block, you are effectively repricing the neighborhood against elite wages rather than the median income of current Somervillians. This influx of high earners drives up the demand for high-end retail and services, creating a feedback loop where the cost of a simple meal or grocery run rises to meet the new “market” capacity. It’s an “induced demand” cycle that ensures the area only becomes more expensive to exist in, even if you’re lucky enough to snag one of the subsidized units.
Ultimately, this “housing delayed is housing denied” rhetoric is a tactic used to bypass any meaningful scrutiny of a project’s long-term impacts. Real affordability isn’t just a count of units; it’s the total cost of survival in your own neighborhood. We shouldn’t be sold a “simple story” for a “complex problem” that benefits developers today while leaving the community to navigate a city where the median income—and the resulting price of everything—has been artificially pushed out of reach. Moving “efficiently” doesn’t help if you’re just accelerating the timeline for displacing the very people you claim to be protecting.
The area in question is Davis Square, which is the most convenient and probably the most expensive area of Somerville. However people feel about a high-rise in Davis, the idea that it will “gentrify” DAVIS SQUARE makes no sense. The inclusionary units in this proposal would likely represent the only meaningful subsidized housing at all in Davis.
@Francis Puertos, the median income in Davis Square ranges from $130k–240k. We already have “elite wages”, and Davis Square is our highest income neighborhood.
Additionally, new homes do not induce demand, that’s what jobs do. Homebuilders are responding to that demand, not creating it.
As for goods & services, if an influx of high earners did that, Davis Square would be full of high-end businesses, seeing as it’s got the largest concentration of high earners in the entire City. Instead, it’s suffering significant disinvestment & has far too many empty storefronts.
As for displacement, who lives on this property today that would be displaced?
Please don’t misinform people, and please don’t use chatbots to do your writing for you.