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© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
(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.)
By Alan Bingham
Historically a worker’s town, Somerville is densely populated bordering Cambridge and Boston. Its location always meant higher than median land prices. The population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries included workers of many ethnic backgrounds, but heavily Irish and Italian.
The double-decker and triple-deckers were discrete housing units on top of each other and are stick built of wood for economy of construction.
Owned by a family, the older parents invariably living downstairs with a younger generation upstairs and sometimes a tenant on the third floor of the triple to help pay the mortgage. This made them affordable and gave the city the benefit of multi-family and extended family culture.
Now the double and triple-deckers are the sought after, low hanging fruit by developers who want to flip them for a quick profit. Doing a gut and cheap renovation on these and then selling them as ‘luxury’ condominiums is a developers dream. They easily double their money and can do this without having to fulfill any affordable housing regulations. These so called ‘luxury’ condos are in the 1 million + range each.
The problem is that these buildings, once affordable are no longer in that class. The working and middle class families that had lived there cannot afford to buy back in. The end result is the continuing attrition of affordable housing in the city.
Thus gentrification takes over and Somerville is destined to be a bedroom community for Boston. The population mix, the multi-generation extended families, the culture, the things that have made Somerville such a dynamic city are slowly being eroded. Such is the loss of a lot of affordable housing.
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The author is completely correct. It’s a total disgrace. You have no idea how many mailings I get each week from developers trying to buy my single-family home. NO. NO WAY. LEAVE ME ALONE.
I will never sell unless I have absolutely no choice in the matter, and hopefully that will never happen. Somerville is trying to become another downtown Boston. What’s next, skyscrapers? What, then, makes us stand out from the other big cities?
We need to halt this greed and prevent developers from building any more of these hideous condos. If there is an affordable housing situation, it’s the fault of the developers, and those in City power allowing them to take away whatever we have left.
We’re already running out of green space because of it, we’re having increasing rodent issues, and yet the City acts like theyre worried about it, when they’re the cause of the problem in the first place.
Creating so-called “affordable housing” isn’t going to help those who already live here. Instead, it will only draw yet more people here to live. If you want affordable housing, encourage existing renters to lower their prices by offering some type of incentive, either through tax reduction or something else. Help the people already here to afford to continue living here.
There are plenty of housing opportunities here already that can offer a solution to the affordable housing problem. All the City is doing now is letting greedy developers to build more and more expensive apartments and condos, instead of building more single-family homes to allow people a means to settle down here and raise their children.
What person wants to raise a family in an apartment complex or a condo? It’s clear what type of people Somerville’s administration is trying to draw in here, and it’s not your typical family group.
To those who make these decisions, stop acting like you care about everyone living here, when your actions clearly do not match your words.
Oddly, we have banned the construction of triple-deckers and modestly-sized homes in most of the city. If you’d like to preserve the legacy of Somerville as a town with modestly-priced, modestly-sized homes, please let your city councilors know that you support keeping triple-deckers, by right, in all parts of the new zoning code.
All multi family buildings in Somerville are either apartment buildings or condos. These constitute the vast majority of buildings in the city. Are you suggesting that nobody wants to raise a family in the vast majority of our city?
How does allowing triple deckers by right “preserve…modestly-priced homes”? You might as well throw gasoline on an already hot real estate market. It will speed-up tear-downs of smaller homes and lead to conversion of older housing stock to build more luxury condos and apartments. The idea that triple-deckers provide working class families with a path toward upward economic mobility is based on a 100-year old real estate market. The only people buying or building triple-deckers today are luxury developers who sell for $1 to 1.5 million per unit. If you want to speed up gentrification in Somerville, do what Aaron says.
You think it is bad now just wait until the new zoning ordinance passes. The whole plan is to unleash a wave of development in the neighborhoods which will drive out even more families. Which is what many Our Revolution really want because they see long time residents and homeowners and small landlords as a political threat. City council and especially Lance Davis does not even care what is in zoning anymore they just want to pass something so it looks like they have done something.
All I have to say is this is not the Somerville I grew up in. It’s still a great city with great people, but it sure is different.