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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)
The front of Hudson St.
By William A. White, Jr.
A number of residents have contacted Denise Provost and me about the construction on the small lot next to her home, the status of her lawsuit against the City, and about how our City government has responded to the zoning amendments I introduced. As someone who has practiced land use and zoning law in Somerville for decades, I can tell you this is among the worst planning decisions in the City’s history. Everyone should look closely at the accompanying photographs, because as of today, our entire City government is allowing this type of development to proceed unimpeded in our residential neighborhoods.
If you live in a residential district, this massive development can happen without any warning — the first time you learn about it is when the bulldozers show up next door to knock down the neighboring house. Because the City conducts a secret procedure, a 1,500-square-foot, three-story building can be constructed just three feet from your property line. If you are a tenant without a lease and your landlord wants to sell to a developer, there is no condominium conversion law to protect you from eviction. Instead, our City has created an incentive for landlords to evict tenants and sell to developers who make a fortune building four luxury condominiums. Do you want a mixed school system where children from different backgrounds grow up together? Forget about it.
A few years ago, we rezoned Somerville. That rezoning incorporated a consensus: dense development would be concentrated in certain districts, while neighborhoods of one-, two-, and three-family homes would be preserved. The City has now reneged on that understanding. It is a hell of a thing when residents must sue their own city to protect their rights — but here we are.
I have already filed a lawsuit in the Land Court to invalidate the City’s lot split process and a motion for a summary disposition. The City’s response is due by July 11. I have also filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office alleging that the City’s secret procedure is a violation of the State’s Open Meeting Law.
Consider the facts: Based on total dwelling units, Somerville has the highest percentage of condominiums in the state, the lowest percentage of single-family homes, and the smallest average lot size. We are the most densely populated city in Massachusetts. Fewer than 20% of residents have lived in their current residence for ten years or longer. In the face of all this, and without meaningful input from residents, the City has chosen policies that destroy one- and two-family homes — precisely the properties most likely to be purchased by first-time buyers — and replace them with three-story luxury condominiums with a 1,500-square-foot “backyard cottage” as a fourth unit. The City has also removed the affordable housing requirement for backyard cottages, subsidizing developers who give nothing back to the community. To my knowledge, no other community in Massachusetts allows this as of right in residential neighborhoods.
View of the backyard.
Backyard cottages were originally conceived as small, freestanding rental units. By permitting their use as luxury condominiums, the City eliminates any possibility of affordable backyard rentals. We should be crafting policies that foster a mixed, vibrant, and stable city — not handing Somerville’s most valuable real estate to wealthy developers to make a fortune and contribute nothing. This cannot be blamed on gentrification. It is a direct consequence of the City’s policies on lot splits and backyard luxury condominiums. The City is actively promoting gentrification — it is not a passive participant!
Thirty years ago, Somerville residents faced a similar crisis when Assembly Square was slated to become a massive strip mall. They organized, fought, and filed a lawsuit to help achieve a mixed-use community. Because of their efforts, we have Assembly Row today. The time has come to organize again.
I am troubled by the Mayor’s silence. The developer became the lead party once the City issued the building permits. The Mayor could not settle the lawsuit even if he agreed with Denise, only the developer could do that. But the Mayor can protect Somerville residents moving forward. Every day, tenants in our residential districts remain at risk of eviction for the next luxury condominium development. Every family thinking of buying a one- or two-family house will be outbid by a luxury developer. The winner of the next mayoral election will serve a four-year term for the first time. Four years under the wrong leadership that continues to promote this process could produce a demographic change this city may never recover from.
We have upcoming elections for state representative and state senate — question the candidates and make your endorsements known. Call the Mayor’s office and demand to know where he stands. And if he intends to actively promote gentrification, prepare for next November.
Most Somerville residents wouldn’t know who I am, so let me be brief. I grew up here during Somerville’s most difficult years, studied government and economics at Harvard, and spent decades practicing land use and zoning law. One of the reasons I ran for office was to ensure Somerville did not repeat past planning mistakes. I served 24 years on the City Council, six as President, and wrote a number of zoning ordinances. When I tell you that the City’s current lot split and backyard cottage policy is among the worst planning decisions in Somerville’s history, I am speaking as someone with more than 50 years of planning and zoning experience. It is a perverse abomination of planning.
The proposed zoning amendments will expire before the City Council acts on them and must be resubmitted. To do so, I need signatures from registered voters. If you are willing to sign or help collect signatures, please email me at councilorwhite@gmail.com. P.S. For any “democratic socialists” who support these gentrification policies that subsidize developers who eliminate affordable housing and return nothing to the community, I am certain Rosa Luxemburg is turning in her grave watching you.
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Author is a complete moron NIMBY, one of way too many. If you don’t want to live in a city then move and let the rest of us do what we want with our property.
Somerville’s planning staff are just the advance team for developers profiting off the degradation of what we most love about our city and community. The new mayor is either too weak or too deluded to control them. And Councilors like Ben Ewen Campen, Matt McLoughlin, and Ben Wheeler are their cheerleaders.
At the meeting to consider the zoning amendments that Mr. White has proposed, Ewen-Campen declared that he didn’t like gentrification, but nothing can be done about it. McLoughlin agreed that “you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” Rather than resisting gentrification, these hypocrites who pay lip service to affordability support policies and staff that promote gentrification.
Thank you, Bill White, for taking this issue on. The Oak Street, Houghton Street, & Bolton Street neighborhood in Ward Two where I live has seen a recent proliferation of this kind of dense development. Long-term, moderate-income tenants have been displaced. We can change this if we organize to require a return to public hearings to split lots instead of city planning staff approval. We can organize to change the zoning to further limit the size of accessory dwelling units and require affordable housing in smaller developments. Our neighborhood has supported dense, affordable housing development by non-profit developers for decades. This is not what the latest zoning changes have produced. I don’t believe that this is what the City Council expected would happen. It is time for a change.
Hello “Real Somerville” Anyone using the term NIMBY is, I am sure, not a true Somerville resident as I envision the term. I suspect you grew up in some pampered community, living in your parents basement playing video games. I suspect that you have no understanding of the value of community and the impact of gentrification. Instead, you derive meaning for your life through virtue signaling, based on your claptrap understanding of economics with no background in elementary land use principles. I am sure you never walked a picket line with union members, volunteered for civil rights causes or did any work for any civic or social organization to help folks. Be that as it may, I look forward to a public debate on this issue with those of your ilk. I will not, however, post anymore in response to anonymous buffoonery.
It is beyond the time to harness the takeover of our neighborhoods by inconsiderate, overpriced development that has robbed of us green space, affordability and community.
According to this paper, as of 2023 only about 40% of municipalities in MA have inclusionary zoning, for ADUs or otherwise: https://pioneerinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Inclusionary-Zoning-White-Paper-03062025.pdf
If the goal is to make starter homes affordable, letting developers replace single-family houses with triple-deckers and ADUs would help increase supply and reduce prices. Not every starter home needs to be a freestanding single-family house, Somerville is not adding any new land, and lower-density housing is less good at making walkable neighborhoods that people love and enable community by getting people out of their cars.
I visited Hudson Street myself and what I saw seemed pretty normal for a residential Somerville street. The only unusual thing is that on one side of one building there’s a 6-foot alley next to the neighboring house instead of a 10-foot driveway. That’s a lot more than beautiful brownstone row houses have between them or my ugly early-19th-century garage gives my neighbors (in both cases, zero feet). If we want to de-crowd our residential streets by freeing up land for green space, the zoning change we should be petitioning for is four-story apartment buildings by right with more open space – my triple-decker happily co-exists with those on my street.
We also need to petition for the other half of the deal Mr. White thinks has been struck, which never came to pass – substantial increase in maximum building height to allow transit-oriented development. Saying no to *both* halves of the “deal” means the displacement and gentrification that is already happening will continue if not intensify.
Allowing developers to build market-rate housing is not a “subsidy”; the city pays nothing for this and actually gets more property tax revenue and water and sewer customers. What it gives the community is desperately needed housing and price relief. Inclusionary zoning is a tax – one that is so heavy that it prevents most small developments from happening. I agree we need more income-restricted housing, especially for those who can’t afford *any* place to live, but to get it we either need bigger projects or higher taxes on everyone.
As I was riding my bike around Somerville today, I noticed that we actually already have 6-foot alleys between some of our residential buildings, which seem to have been there decades if not more than a century. They are a lot less common than full driveways, but the near sides of those houses seem like a good place to put rooms that don’t need windows – stairwells, bathrooms, and TV rooms – or bedrooms that want fresh air but not direct sun. It’s a bit odd that people think this practice has suddenly become a source of moral indignation and economic ruin.
The current ordinance is not working as intended. People seeking to purchase homes for themselves are being outbid by delevopers keen to tear down existing houses and build multiple buildings on a single lot. Councilor Davis stated at a recent meeting: “What has been described is absolutely not consistent with what I thought we were giving folks permission to build,” Councilors Clingan, and Ewen-Campen have each said the structures being built are larger than they imagined when the zoning was adopted in 2019. Councilor White’s ammendments are well conceived and would remedy this situation. They should be adopted to ensure that orginal good intentions of the ADU ordinance are realized.
I agree wholeheartedly with what Bill White, and Claire Murphy have said. We in Somerville talk so much about sustainability, and yet, single family homes are being torn down and bought by developers who cover every available bit of earth with tall buildings, that destroy green space and block the sun from our neighbors. (we don’t have sun rights in Mass, and the zoning regs consider pervious pavement “green space.” And yes, we need housing, but we need affordable housing, not more luxury apartments. Our representatives are doing nothing to reign in the developers. We are the densest city in the Commonwealth. How much can our infrastructure bear? I hope the mayor and other councilors will stop shrugging and adopt Bill White’s amendments.