A local senior expressed displeasure with the proposed SomerVision 2040 plan during the Housing and Community Development meeting last week.

By Bella Levavi

After Victor Nascimento, Outreach Coordinator for Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, presented additions to SomerVision 2040 in the Housing and Community Development virtual meeting on Tuesday, July 7, a senior citizen spoke out denouncing the plan.

Kristen Strezo, Somerville Councilor At-Large, sponsored Elaine Koury, a senior and Somerville resident, to speak at the meeting. “There is no real section in the plan dealing with senior citizens,” Cory said. “Perhaps, they assumed that our needs would be covered by covering everyone else’s needs, but this ignores the fact that seniors have needs that some others don’t. And it dismisses some very important facts.”

After Koury’s passionate speech, Strezo quickly left the meeting. She came back several minutes later announcing that she will reinstate the Senior Committee for the City Council. She said her next steps will be to research and plan for this new committee.

Nascimento explained that SomerVision does not need the approval from the City Council to move forward with their plan, but an endorsement from elected officials of Somerville adds legitimacy to this decade’s SomerVision.

Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen noted that SomerVision 2030 is often cited as a precedent for many citywide projects, and this decade’s plan should not be rushed through approval. Ewen-Campen went on to say that another round of public comments is necessary for SomerVision 2040.

In the SomerVision presentation that sparked this discussion, Nascimento explained many edits to this decade’s plan that prioritized seniors in its language and policy ideas. The presentation noted that the plan changed its language from the vague “elderly” and “older adults” to specifically “seniors.”

The new plan also states that “the threat of displacement is particularly strong for residents who are on both a low and fixed income.” The word “fixed” directly references the income that seniors live on after retirement.

Nascimento explained that the problems Somerville experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic are not new but are the same exacerbated problems. The SomerVision project was put on hold late 2019 to focus energy on providing services during the pandemic. Now the project is back in the works with edits in context of the pandemic.

Some edits to SomerVision due to the pandemic are “expanding capacity with Racial and Social Justice departments,” an expansion of “off-street walking paths,” and “New Commercial Development tasks related to shared use, commercial space affordability, and small business support.”

The approval of SomerVision 2040 was left in Committee. The Committee for Housing and Community Development will reconvene this fall.

In addition to a discussion about SomerVision 2040, Ellen Shachter, the Director of the Office of Housing Stability updated the Committee about evictions in Somerville. According to Shachter, the office received 129 requests for rental assistance in June. She explained there are many avenues for rental support, but many of them cannot be used by undocumented residents of Somerville.

The Supreme Court declined to take a case about the eviction moratorium put in place by the CDC, so the federal moratorium will continue to be active until July 20. The Somerville moratorium will be in place longer. This stops people from being physically removed from their homes but it will not stop court cases from commencing.

Shachter said the most important message to give to people facing evictions right now is that Somerville has set up a system for free attorneys during the pandemic. If a landlord brings their tenant to court, the tenant can be directed to the attorney of the day for assistance.

The Office of Housing Stability has met with four of the largest landlords in Somerville, and ensured that none of these companies have done any evictions during the pandemic, according to Shachter.

The meeting also included Luisa Oliveira, Director of Public Space and Urban Forestry, updating the committee on the ordering of communication boards for public playgrounds. According to Oliveira, 15 communication boards have been ordered by the Parks and Recreation Department, and that placement has not been decided. She explained that if one wants to request a board be placed at a specific park for a deaf child, an email request can be sent to loliveira@somervillema.gov.

The meeting concluded with all the members of the Committee leaving the virtual meeting to attend other meetings, but one. Without a quorum, they were unable to vote to end the meeting, so Strezo ended the virtual gathering without formally ending the meeting.