By Douglas Yu

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While the Green Line Extension project is on its way to connecting Lechmere Station and Union Square, some long-term Somerville residents are concerned they might be pushed out of the neighborhood they love.

Melody Chapin shares this concern with many other residents. In the early 2000s, when Chapin was in her teenage years, her family moved from apartment to apartment. When she got married, Chapin said, “My mother found that Somerville and the area surrounding it were also gentrified. It was too expensive (to live here). She moved to Worcester.”

As a consequence of those concerns among residents like Chapin, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) partnered with the Somerville Community Corporation (SCC) and the city of Somerville to research and report on the impacts that the Green Line Extension (GLX) will have on the housing market in Somerville. They work with the community to try to come up with solutions for people like Chapin, who risk being pushed out of the neighborhood due to the climbing cost of housing.

Chapin and her husband are fortunate enough to continue to live in Somerville. And they noticed that their neighborhood started changing in a way that many people do not expect.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of the young professionals coming in,” Chapin said. “And I feel like when I’m out during the day, during the festivals, I see a lot less people of color. And that makes me worry about (racial demographics), because a lot of times, that’s very connected to socioeconomic status.”

According to MAPC’s The Dimensions of Displacement report, 40 percent of apartments in the GLX corridor are affordable to low-income households, but the same applies to only 29 percent of apartments near Red Line stations. When the new stations along the GLX are built, the apartments around these stations could see the average rent climb more than 25 percent and as much as 70 percent. Washington Street, Ball Square and Union Square might see the biggest increases.

The possible result is that more low-income families get pushed out and have to seek cheaper housing in other neighborhoods, such as Malden and Everett.

“We already know that we need more housing in Somerville,” Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone said. “In SomerVision, as a community, we set for the goal of creating 6,000 new housing units to a minimum 1,200 affordable housing for the next 20 years.”

In terms of racial diversity, the report suggests that Somerville became more diverse from 2000 to 2010, driven largely by increase in the Asian and Hispanic populations.

“Everybody has the opportunity to grow up in the neighborhood that they desire to be in,” Curtatone said.

Tim Reardon, assistant director of data services of MAPC, said that communities like Somerville hold so much diversity, and there are so many vulnerable people that the city needs to pay attention to. He also added that after investing in transit accessibility, such as the GLX project, in many cities across the U.S., higher income households end up moving into those areas.

“[Higher-income households] who have more discretionary income tend to have higher auto ownership. As lower-income households find it more difficult to stay in that community, they end up moving out to more remote locations that are less transit accessible,” Reardon said. “[Lower-income families] end up not benefiting from [the investment in transportation].”

Somerville does not have to follow that story, in which low-income families are forced to move to less transit-accessible locations.

“One thing we know is that whether Green Line will be built, Somerville is going to change,” Reardon said. “What we need to do is to make sure that there are continued opportunities for low-income households to move into Somerville.”

The city will continue to deal with a lot of tasks it is working on right now, according to Reardon. The tasks include planning for the transformational areas, working with the community on new zoning for the city’s squares and corridors and working with organizations like SCC to ensure the creation of more dedicated and affordable housing plans.

Five months ago, Chapin was complaining with her husband and a couple of other working-class people about the fact that moving out of Somerville is going to happen anyway, but she decided to speak up for families like hers in the neighborhood when MAPC joined with SCC and the city to start tackling housing issues.

“I think that we really just need to start being active about finding creative ways to increase housing, speak with our community and get the people who have lived here for a long time on board with staying here,” Chapin said.