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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, September 19, 2025

Proposals seek to help Somerville housing issues

Affordable housing has become increasingly scarce in Somerville, but two competing proposals seek to relieve the strain on low-income housing-seekers.

Both initiatives propose to modify the Somerville Linkage Ordinance, a 1990 law requiring new commercial developments over 30,000 square feet to pay a linkage fee of $2.60 per square foot.

Funds raised by the Linkage Ordinance go toward the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, managed by the Affordable Housing Organizing Committee (AHOC).

The first proposal, presented by the AHOC at a public hearing on Sept. 16, recommends raising the linkage fee to $3.91. This figure is based on the results of a study made by Kendall Square-based Sideman Consulting Services in June 2003.

But Ellen Shacter, a housing lawyer at Cambridge/Somerville Legal Services, said the study actually showed that raising the fee to $3.91 would not be sufficient.

"The study found that $12.41 per square foot at the 30,000 [square foot threshold] would be the ideal rate," she said. "But in light of the development environment and the fact that [the city] must remain competitive with other communities, $3.91 was the rate recommended."

The Somerville Linkage Ordinance calls for the linkage fee to be recalculated every three years. The current fee dates from late 2000.

The second proposal, made by the office of Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone on Oct. 1., would raise the linkage fee to $3.50 per square foot, with an additional fee of 50 cents per square foot to support open spaces in Somerville.

The 50-cent charge would specifically benefit "public parks, streetscapes, sidewalks, pedestrian ways, lighting and historic preservation," according to Curtatone spokesman Mark Horan.

The mayor's proposal also seeks to levy the fees on commercial spaces of 20,000 square feet or more, down from the current level of 30,000 square feet.

Shacter, speaking on behalf of the AHOC, had no comments on mayor's plan.

Somerville's current linkage fee is the lowest in the Boston metropolitan area. Cambridge and Boston charge $3.28 and $7.28, respectively.

Cambridge's ordinance also charges developers the linkage fee for each square foot after the first 2,500, a significantly lower threshold than in Somerville.

The issue of affordable housing is pressing for "too many" Somerville residents, according to Nancy Bacci, a community activist and AHOC member. According to Shacter, there are 4,567 households on the waitlist for Section 8 federal low-incoming housing assistance in Somerville.

Developed as part of the 1974 Housing and Development Act, the Section 8 housing program provides rent subsidies in the form of vouchers and certificates for low-income households.

There are also 1,281 families on the Somerville federal public housing waitlist; 796 of which are families with children, according to Shacter.

Many Somerville families, especially members of the large East Somerville immigrant population, share houses and apartments to split rent costs, Somerville Alderman-at-Large Denise Provost said.

"People are living in really over-crowded conditions," Provost said. "The last census count for Somerville was between 70,000 and 80,000 people but there are 56,000 cars registered in the City. It is estimated that the population is closer to 90,000 to 100,000."

Bacci said the median cost of buying a house in Somerville in 2003 was $391,500, a figure which has been "increasing at a rate far greater than median household income," she said.

The median income for Somerville families is $46,315. About 12 percent of the Somerville population is living below the poverty line; 70 percent of which is made up of families.

Tufts' lack of guaranteed on-campus housing for all students only exacerbates the problem.

"Everywhere across the board, every study shows that when universities do not house all their students in dormitories, it has an inflationary effect on housing prices," Shacter said. "Tufts' location in Somerville is no exception."

Though Tufts freshmen and sophomores must live on-campus, most juniors and seniors find houses in Medford and Somerville to live in.

Shacter said groups students can collectively pay $600 to $800 a month each to live in Somerville, but that covering rising rental costs is "significantly harder" for a single family living on one or two incomes.

The added pressure of Tufts students on Somerville's housing woes will be somewhat alleviated by a new dormitory, Sophia Gordon Hall, which will provide housing for 132 students when it is completed in 2006.

But the housing crunch is particularly urgent right now, since the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is at an all-time low of $200,000.

The fund usually operates when large developers donate to affordable housing projects already under way, according to Mary Louise Daly, a fund trustee and 21-year resident of Somerville.

"But the trust fund money is so low now that we can't afford to do much at all; we can't leverage big money from other developers," Daly said.

The issue of linkage fees is particularly urgent right now, since the closure of a Ford Motor Company plant there left open a 145-acre plot of land that has been targeted for five million square feet of commercial, housing and office

development.

The land also includes the Assembly Square Mall, for which the Somerville issued permits for the first phase of redevelopment on Sept. 14, two days before AHOC presented its new linkage fee proposal.

The way ordinances work in Somerville, if they are passed by the Board of Aldermen and signed by the mayor, they go into effect the day of the public hearing. As a result, the Assembly Square Mall will not be subject to either of the proposed revisions to the Linkage Ordinance.

This is why Provost wants to ensure the proposed $3.91 linkage fee is passed before other development begins in the rest of the Assembly Square.

"A lot of the projected development in Somerville is retail - and half of the retail jobs pay less than $25,950 a year," she said. "Only about 50 of the projected retail jobs [will] pay above $35,000."

"The more retail [in Somerville], the more affordable housing you need because people are earning less money," Provost said.

If the AHOC's proposal is passed, the proposed development at Assembly Square will bring in $1.382 million as opposed to the $919,000 at the current $2.60 level.

Corresponding figures were not available for the mayor's plan.

According to Jesse Kanson-Benanav, a community organizer at the non-profit Somerville Community Corporation, the Assembly Square plot "is the largest proposed development in years and probably the largest we will have in a very, very long time because there's not a lot of extra space in the city."

But Horan disagreed, saying "there are huge amounts of space for commercial development of 20,000 square feet or more still left."

He cited Davis Square, "if used more efficiently," as an example.

Either proposal must go through the Planning Board and then be approved by the Board of Alderman before taking effect or being rejected, but both are still under consideration.