Over the past decade, Somerville has had the steepest increase in housing pricing in Massachusetts—we are truly on the front lines of the displacement and gentrification crisis. For decades, the “solutions” have been tax credits to developers, direct subsidies for market-based rents, and public-private partnerships. Such private market “solutions” are corporate welfare schemes and they hurt our residents through handouts to developers and an over-reliance on the construction of luxury units. Affordable housing for all residents is a fundamental right. Housing is where we call home, not investment opportunities for real estate developers. 

At its worst, housing policy has brick-by-brick worsened racial inequality, segregation, fairness in the education system, and income inequality. The failure in housing policy is directly responsible for the fact that Massachusetts is the 6th most unequal state in the country. 

Over the past few weeks, I have been working with tenants at 19 Central Street on Spring Hill who are facing displacement due to a 30% rent hike by their billionaire landlord in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are fighting back by forming a tenants association to balance the power their landlord holds over their livelihoods and to collectively negotiate rent, and I am doing everything in my power to support their effort. Unfortunately, such experiences are all too common in Somerville and their experience highlights the need to fight for housing policies that centers on residents and our rights to safe, affordable, and stable housing.

In Somerville, 65% of residents are renters, placing a majority of our city at the mercy of policies that undercut tenants. Deplorable standards for quality and safety, unjust fees that make moving obscenely expensive, and unpredictable and unfair evictions are stomached by renters.

To solve the housing crisis, we must fundamentally rebuild our priorities and direct them away from profit. The price of real estate is a reflection of the vibrancy of a community. All of us in Somerville create value for our community by improving our public schools, making art, preparing delicious meals at our favorite local restaurants, and tending to outdoor spaces. It is time that we stop outside real estate opportunists from profiting off of the value that we as a community build together. As a state representative, I will see to it that we bring true meaning to housing as a human right by investing in new and affordable housing, supporting the right of tenants to organize, and working with local, union labor on all development projects.  

I support a robust social housing program and will advocate for federal support to bolster local funding to lead a massive expansion of social housing in Massachusetts as part of a Green New Deal. The connections between profit, entrenched wealth and housing policy must be broken through linkage fees, transfer taxes on the sale of homes over $1 million, and increasing the estate tax on estates over $1 million. Property taxes should never be a source of displacement for working families. 

I will advocate for a bill of rights for tenants, guaranteeing the right to quality and accessible housing by enforcing building codes, putting an end to “no fault” evictions, guaranteeing the right to counsel, sealing all eviction cases, and protecting tenants from unjust fees. As a campaign, we are refusing any contributions from real-estate developers. We have the power to stop heartbreaking displacement and to make affordable and stable housing a guaranteed right for all by putting people before profit.

WE WILL FIGHT FOR:

• Fully fund a home guarantee by expanding the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Trust 

• Advocate for federal funds for the refurbishment and construction of social housing and advancing efforts to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prohibits the creation of new public housing  

• Ending the anti-democratic, state-wide ban on rent control 

• Investment in mixed-income public housing to eliminate gentrification and create individual economic stability

• Net-zero public housing that is built exclusively by local unions 

• A just cause eviction law and the right to counsel in housing disputes

• Sealed eviction cases through the passage of the Homes Act

• The rights of tenants, including the right to organize and the right to purchase, preventing displacement and offering residents a pathway to ownership

• Protecting the homeless through a housing first model, providing permanent housing and support services for people experiencing homelessness

• Expanding emergency assistance shelter programs 

• An official written statement on all housing and real-estate communications that acknowledges that property in Massachusetts is built on the stolen land of Indigenous peoples