An architect’s rendering of the building planned for 181 Washington Street. – Photo courtesy of Dimella Schaffer

Controversy surrounds affordable housing project

By Elizabeth Sheeran

Conflict over a planned Union Square affordable housing development has grown so heated, the mayor is enlisting professional mediators to cool things down.

At the center of the controversy is a proposed five-story, 40-unit apartment complex that the Somerville Community Corporation (SCC) plans to build at 181 Washington Street, the former Boys and Girls Club site. SCC Director Danny Leblanc said the project supports the non-profit’s mission to increase affordable housing options in Somerville.

“We’re trying to maintain the economic diversity that we enjoy in the community today,” said Leblanc. “We’re trying to do everything we can to enable moderate and low income residents to stay here, to sustain a Somerville that can be for everyone.”

He said the SCC bought the property because it was priced right to make an affordable housing project workable with a combination of grants, subsidies and tax credits. As planned, the Washington Street Apartments will have a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom homes, rented at below-market rates. SCC offices will occupy a rear area of the ground floor, with two or three retail spaces along the street front.

Around 20 percent of the apartments will be low-income subsidized housing. But most will be so-called “workforce” housing, where residents can earn up to 60 percent of the area’s average income, or about $57,000 for a family of four. A lottery will decide who can move in, with 70 percent of the workforce housing reserved for people who already live or work in Somerville.

But opponents say the planned development will take the neighborhood in the wrong direction. “It’s too dense. It’s out of character for that end of the Square. It’s the wrong development as the new gateway into Union Square,” said Zac Zasloff, founder of Union Square Rising, a residents’ group that counters the SCC’s “Everyone’s Somerville” motto with the slogan, “There’s room for everyone. But let’s be smart about it.”

Zasloff, who owns a home next door to the site, said the ad hoc alliance had gathered petition signatures from over 220 area residents and more than 20 neighborhood businesses who oppose the project “100 percent in its current form,” saying it will depress nearby property values, and will do nothing to spur economic development.

He said opponents aren’t against affordable housing per se, but Union Square already has more than its fair share of affordable housing units, and a building in which all the apartments are subsidized will become a “pocket of poverty” in the neighborhood.  Instead, the group favors so-called inclusionary development, where large housing projects include a percentage of subsidized apartments. “It’s a great way to organically scale it, without stigmatizing the people who live there,” said Zasloff.

Zasloff said neighbors also object to the scale and appearance of the building they’ve seen in preliminary designs, saying it won’t fit in with its surroundings, and will block views from nearby homes. And he said the SCC has shut their voices out of the process.”From the very first meeting, the condescending tone of the SCC in terms of presenting this as a done deal has incited the neighborhood to come together,” said Zasloff.

And Zasloff charges the SCC and its supporters with trying to provoke class warfare by demonizing those who can afford market-rate housing, even though many of them chose to live in Union Square because of its diversity. He said he was called a “racist pig” at one of the SCC community meetings.

“I know people who don’t feel comfortable going to the meetings anymore because of some of the things they have been called and because of the aggressive tactics taken by some of their supporters,” said Zasloff. “It’s borderline physically threatening. It’s getting uglier and uglier.”

Leblanc acknowledged the “racist pig” comment was made, but said it was an isolated incident on the part of one individual outside the meeting, and does not reflect the organization as a whole. He said the SCC had held four community meetings to date, with a lot of public input, and had already changed the building height and design, in response to neighbor concerns. “We do more to reach out to the community and get input than any other developer that I know of in Somerville,” said Leblanc.

Tension between supporters and opponents has ramped up in recent months, hitting a fever pitch at a SCC community meeting in June, which opponents picketed. A planned July 11 meeting to bring both sides together was cancelled when Mayor Joseph Curtatone announced he had engaged outside mediators, although the SCC went ahead with a public rally that day, saying it wanted to show that many neighbors supported the project.

The mayor’s decision to intervene speaks to how contentious things had become, considering the development has yet to come before the city for approval. City officials, including the mayor, say it’s too soon for them to weigh in on the pros and cons of the project, because there isn’t yet a formal proposal to consider.

The building is being designed to meet all zoning guidelines. But the final plans will still need approval from the Planning Board, which will consider input from the Design Review Committee, planning staff, city officials and the public. Planning Director George Proakis said the Board will ultimately decide if the proposal meets the intent of the zoning code, looking at things like whether it fits in with the neighborhood and prevents adverse impacts.

Proakis said there’s no recent precedent for looking at whether a building with 100 percent affordable housing will have adverse impacts   He said the city’s goal for 20 percent of new homes to be affordable can’t be met solely by the current mandate for developers to include affordable housing, which is 12.5 percent of units in most of the city, including at the Washington Street site. So Somerville will need some projects built primarily as affordable housing. But it will be up to the Planning Board to review each proposal.

In the meantime, the mayor said mediation can only improve the tone of the conversation around Union Square. He said the non-profit Consensus Building Institute, which has helped smooth out similar conflicts in Somerville in the past, has experience with land use issues and a reputation for even-handedness. “I thought all parties to the Union Square housing discussion could benefit from their involvement,” said Mayor Curtatone.

Both the SCC and Union Square Rising have agreed to the mediation, which will also reach out to other stakeholders. But it remains to be seen if they can find common ground.

“The hope is that we come out of this with something that we can live with, that has wide support from all the voices that have a legitimate interest,” said the SCC’s Leblanc.

Said Zasloff, of Union Square Rising, “We asked for the mediation, because we want a real dialogue. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be involved in this kind of community unrest. But at the same time, I’m not going to allow a quasi-developer to steamroll this project into the community. It just doesn’t seem fair.”