By George P. Hassett

Will Assembly Square development price longtime East Somerville residents out of the neighborhood? How can we keep families in East Somerville? How do we promote alternative transportation methods in Somerville? How will commercial development in Union Square and Assembly Square affect the city’s immigrant community?

Those were just some of the questions concerned community members raised and tried to answer at the East Somerville Summit June 19. The summit is part of the Somerville Community Corporation‚Äôs effort to prevent displacement in the neighborhood as it becomes a more desirable place to live and rents and property values increase.   

Danny LeBlanc, CEO of SCC, said the issue of displacement is at the core of the summit’s goals. “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. Leblanc is a resident of Glen Street.

The summit’s goal is for the individuals and organizations of East Somerville to craft and execute a vision for their neighborhood’s future. Over 100 people attended the June 19 event. Eight working groups 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.

The concerns raised within the working groups ranged from the East Somerville library being closed on Tuesdays (residents want it open) to day laborers waiting for work at Foss Park. “In five years, we hope people do not have to line up every morning to wait for work that will barely help them survive,” said Tito Meza of SCC who worked in the jobs group.

Immigrant issues were raised in many of the groups including the youth, jobs and education groups. The education group said a priority was to make sure that all material to parents from school officials went home in multiple languages.

Participants then met in smaller groups and shared reactions to the presentations with one another. In one group, Dan McLaughlin asked participants how the displacement that occurred in West Somerville can be avoided in East Somerville.

“I grew up watching neighbors move away and there were suddenly no more kids in my neighborhood. But what can we actually do to keep families here?” he said
Wig Zamore said bringing good jobs to the city can help families stay.

‚ÄúWhy don‚Äôt we make an effort to unionize the big box stores in Assembly Square? There are a lot of national chains there, somebody needs to steer people to those jobs,‚Äù he said