Last week’s “Illuminated Walk” shed light on the Somerville Community Corporation’s 100 Homes program. — Photo by Isabel Sami

By Isabel Sami

The Somerville Community Corporation (SCC) hosted an illuminated walk through East Somerville on Saturday, November 7, to raise awareness about affordable housing in Somerville. Members of the community showed up to carry house-shaped lanterns though the streets as a way to represent the SCC’s 100 Homes program.

Initially, the SCC had planned a gala to celebrate its 50th anniversary in May, but the event was postponed due to the pandemic. SCC board member Stephanie Toews-Moeling had begun making house-shaped lanterns for the gala to hang from the ceiling like stars. They were supposed to feature 100 lanterns to represent the 100 Homes program, where the SCC buys homes off the speculative market to make them permanently affordable.

When the pandemic hit, Toews-Moeling was sitting with all the lanterns in her home, unsure what to do with them at that point. After seeing people safely gather over summer, the board had the idea to host a social distanced outdoors event, which led to the creation of the illuminated walk as a way to celebrate everything the non-profit has accomplished over the past 50 years.

Toews-Moeling put out a call to the community asking for homemade lanterns to be made out of milk cartons, and volunteers heeded her call. Over 60 lanterns were made for the walk, which were then given to participants to carry down the streets. The walk began at the corner of Broadway and McGrath at 6:00 p.m. and ended at Edward L. Leathers Park at 6:45 pm.

Vaidehi Garg, a new resident to Somerville, found out about the event on Facebook through Toews-Moeling’s post. “It was really fun. I made a few lamps, and she gave out detailed instructions so it wasn’t hard,” Garg said. “It was just a small way of contributing.”

“It’s a horrible thing, not having a roof over your head,” one long-time Somerville resident said during the walk.

Over the past five decades, the SCC has built over 450 homes, acquired over 100 homes to transition into affordable housing, and found jobs for more than 500 people. Other programs that the non-profit offers are workforce development, financial literacy for first time homebuyers, and culinary peer training, and the SCC also mobilized hundreds of residents to pass Somerville’s Community Preservation Act.

SCC CEO Gonzalo Puigbo said they will continue to build on the 100 Homes program and work with the city. “There’s definitely a huge housing need, not just in Somerville but across the state,” Puigbo said. “There’s a mandate to build more than a thousand homes in the next five years, so we’d like to do as many as we can in the city of Somerville. But specifically, Somerville has become kind of gentrified over the years, mostly because of the inclusion of Sullivan Square station and now Union Square, there’s going to be additional forces, so we want to be ahead of that and make sure that low income families stay here.”

Valerie Infante, a Tufts University student, helped SCC organizers at the event. “Looking at housing myself for college next year, I’m noticing the heavy gentrification in the area,” she said. “Also, as a Latinx woman, I’m also passionate about helping people who do not know English that well and therefore may not know how to appropriately handle documents.”

“We’re still going to be fighting for affordable housing, trying to help the city pass policy that favors affordable housing and clearing hurdles that might have been there over time,” Toews-Moeling said.

According to Puigbo, the walk was a celebration of the work accomplished over the past 50 years. “We’d love to be here for the next 50 years and more, and continue to build on that legacy,” he added. “We hope moving forward we can build on this celebration.”