350 organize for East Somerville’s future

By George P. Hassett

Hundreds of East Somerville residents met Wednesday to finalize and implement an action plan to preserve and improve their neighborhood as it prepares for rapid change in the coming years. Ward 1 Alderman Bill Roche said the effort is proof of the neighborhood’s strong identity and sense of community.

“You wouldn’t see this happen anywhere else in the city. This is one of the neighborhood’s strengths, people can come together and solve problems,” he said.

The meeting, the East Somerville Summit, was the climax of 18 months of planning and organizing sponsored by the Somerville Community Corporation (SCC). The stated goal is for the individuals and organizations of East Somerville to craft and execute a vision for their neighborhood’s future.

Meredith Levy of SCC said at least 350 individuals and a dozen organizations participated in the initiative. In the 18 months of the project, eight working groups formed and presented action plans for a wide range of concerns facing the neighborhood. They were: access to programs and services, streetscape issues, immigrant issues, education and schools, jobs, youth services, affordable housing and economic justice and health.

However at the core of the summit is just one thing, according to Yvette Verdieu: equality. ‚ÄúIf you compare East Somerville to West Somerville, they look like two different worlds right now. When someone comes into East Somerville we don‚Äôt want them to say, ‚ÄòThis is the poor section of town,‚Äô or ‚ÄòThis is the immigrant section of town.‚Äô We want to be equal.‚Äù 

The number one issue according to the working groups is the campaign to lobby Swedish furniture retailer and future Assembly Square tenant IKEA to give priority to East Somerville residents when hiring for their new store, just a short walk away from the neighborhood. Verdieu said the issue has resonated with people because neighborhood residents are being forced to move out due to increasing housing costs. She said good jobs at IKEA can go a long way toward keeping the community stable.

“We don’t want people who love Somerville so much to have to move away to other cities because they can’t afford to keep up [with rent and housing increases],” she said.

In June, SCC Executive Director Danny LeBlanc said the issue at the heart of the initiative is preventing displacement of neighborhood residents. With development beginning in Assembly Square and zoning changes proposed to help bolster Union Square, East Somerville is in the middle of two of the city’s most prized development projects. And making sure current residents remain in the neighborhood and benefit from its changes is SCC’s goal, he said.

“It’s the underlying theme for this whole initiative. We don’t want people to be priced out of East Somerville, so we’re here to ask, ‘what can we as a community do to make the kinds of changes we want and need, without losing the things that are important to the neighborhood?’” he said in June.

After jobs, East Somerville residents ranked affordable housing, immigrant and education issues as their top concerns. LeBlanc pledged SCC would build 50 units of new affordable housing units in the city while working to preserve the 312 affordable housing units across the city that are scheduled to expire between 2010 and 2016.

Another part of the action plan will be to start a rapid response network for immigrants during times of crisis. Mary Lu Mendonca of the city‚Äôs Human Rights Commission said her organization will set up a plan to help immigrants in times of crisis. She said the network would educate and prepare East Somerville families for immigration raids. In August, federal agents swooped into the city to arrest alleged gang members. Immigration advocates said the raids spread fear throughout the entire community.