By Amy Tennery

Twenty-five years ago, Fred Berman made a career change. 

A mathematician in the healthcare industry, he said he began ‚Äúto see people as more than check marks on the sheets measuring whether they could or couldn‚Äôt get help.‚Äù  Berman saw a flawed healthcare system, one in which people could suddenly lose their insurance and have no social program to help them. Twenty-five years ago, Berman decided to become an activist. 

Today, Berman takes on his “biggest volunteer project” to date, running for alderman-at-large in Somerville.

At the Sept. 28 Somerville News contributors meeting, Berman said his experience of growing up in public housing in the Bronx, New York gave him an appreciation of affordable housing. Now as a candidate in his new home, Berman is stressing the issue.

“It gave my parents the opportunity to stay in the city where they were born,” he said. “The support systems people have in their community mean a lot. I think it’s really important for the city to prioritize finding ways to make the city affordable for the people living here.”

Berman said too many longtime residents are being pushed out of Somerville because of dwindling affordable housing opportunities. He is involved in an effort to revise the city’s condominium conversion regulations.

Last year Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and the Somerville Community Corporation, a group Berman has led and been involved with since moving to the city, proposed revising the ordinance regulating how property owners can turn multi-family homes into individual condominiums. The proposed ordinance would have increased the notification times and relocation reimbursements for elderly, handicapped and low income residents.

Critics of condo conversions maintain they decrease the city’s affordable housing stock while pushing out residents who have called the city home for decades.

It generated controversy and widespread opposition when the Small Property Owners Association (SPOA) sent out a mailing to Somerville homeowners calling the measure “de facto rent control.” At a subsequent public hearing, angry residents packed the aldermen’s chambers to cheer challenges to the revised ordinance and shout down supporters. Berman compared the mailing to “yelling fire in a crowded theatre.”

However, he is now in a working group, led by Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz, to revise the proposal and once again present it to city officials and the public. The working group includes people opposed to Curtatone’s revisions. Berman said he expected this effort to be more successful because more interests are being represented in the discussion.

He said he is an experienced mediator and is proud of the settlement he helped negotiate to jumpstart Assembly Square development. Berman, a member of the Mystic View Task Force, said the final agreement hammered out between activists, the city and developers Federal Realty Investment Trust will prove to be better for Somerville residents because of Mystic View’s participation. However, he said the agreement was “not everything I hoped it could be. But we were working in a political reality.”

The settlement came after years of haggling and stalled talks between the activists of Mystic View and city leaders and developers. Mystic View sued and the issue ended up in the courts. Berman said Mystic View was essential in getting Federal Realty to commit to putting up $15 million for an Orange Line MBTA station, building more office space and creating open space.

Berman has been endorsed by state Senator Patricia D. Jehlen, D-Somerville, state rep. Denise Provost, D-Somerville, and state rep. Carl M. Sciortino, D-Somerville.

Berman said he admires the work Alderman-at-Large William A. White and Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz are doing on the board. He said an independent Board of Aldermen can help Curtatone be a better mayor and inspire more residents to get involved in local issues.   

“If we invite and inform and involve city residents they will rise to the occasion. And if the board can challenge the mayor, then I believe he will rise to another
level,” he said.