Issues
Affordable Housing
Dramatic increases to housing costs are forcing Somerville residents out of their homes and communities. As a teacher I saw students, their families, and even our educators displaced from the city. I will fight for Somerville to build and incentivize additional affordable housing units and to establish permanently affordable housing by building or purchasing mixed-income housing. We can incentivize development of additional and higher density housing through changes to zoning, permitting, and funding.
We must expand city programs to defend and strengthen tenant rights and further fund tenant support programs, especially legal services. Our residents deserve Just Cause Eviction, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase, and a Transfer Fee for non-resident real estate sales. I support rent stabilization that prevents excessive year to year changes in rent and includes vacancy controls, with exceptions for small owner-occupied properties and new developments. I will work to change statewide policy to make this possible.
Safe streets
Funding for safe streets needs to be reflected in any budget proposed by the mayors office. This includes measures supporting traffic calming and enforcement as well as infrastructure improvements. Examples of such improvements include widening and repaving sidewalks, ensuring that all curb cuts are ADA compliant, and adding more crosswalks with signals. Installing raised crosswalks in neighborhoods and increasing speed bumps on roads with speeding problems will make our community safer for pedestrians.
As we continue to build towards a safer and more accessible Somerville, we must keep in mind the needs of our elderly and mobility-impaired neighbors, whether they are walking, biking, or driving. Accessible parking spaces must be plentifully available in all commercial zones and near the homes of those who need them. I will fight to ensure that the voices of experts such as the Somerville Commission for Persons with Disabilities are heard when the city is making changes to the streetscape.
I support an ordinance which requires protected bike lanes to be built at the time that a street on the bike network is being repaved or reconstructed. I would like to implement measures that would encourage residents to live car free by offering free or reduced price transit and bike passes. Affordable housing initiatives will also help keep our streets safe, by allowing people who work in Somerville to be able to live here.
Mental health
During my seven years as a teacher at Somerville High School, I saw firsthand the increasing need for mental health services, family support, and youth enrichment programming among my students, especially among students of color and LGBTQ+ students. My students experienced the height of the pandemic and remote learning as a traumatizing period with real negative consequences impacting their social, emotional, and academic development which compounded already existing mental health inequities. As City Councilor, I will advocate for funding to expand mental health care in our schools and enhance our city’s youth programming. I will also fight to ensure the services we are providing are culturally-responsive and language-accessible to best support marginalized youths in our community.
The mental health of our students cannot be separated from the mental health of our community. We need to develop new services and approaches for our neighbors experiencing mental health crises. I will work towards an alternative emergency response program housed outside of the Somerville Police Department which will ensure the first responders to mental health crises are trained, unarmed clinicians. We should draw from successful programs such as STAR (Denver, CO), CAHOOTS (Eugene, OR), CRESS (Amherst, MA), and HEART (Cambridge, MA) as we build a system for Somerville that ensures our neighbors are treated with care and compassion on what is often the worst day of their lives.
Language Justice
Language barriers prevent Somerville residents from fully engaging in the community and civic life. As an immigrant who learned English as a fourth language after moving to America, I have navigated through these difficulties and can use lessons of that experience to make our local government more effective. As we welcome more immigrants from diverse backgrounds, it’s critical to include services in those emerging languages and build on current city efforts to serve everyone.
Providing translation and interpretation services is a way to engage people in their first language to understand what they need from city services. English language instruction plays an important role in empowering people to navigate a primarily English speaking country.
As city councilor, I will connect constituents with the different city services. I will advocate for allocating more of the budget towards translation and interpretation services, English language instruction and city efforts to engage our multilingual community to ensure that everyone’s needs are met.
Sustainable Infrastructure
Many Somerville municipal buildings, including schools, are in terrible shape. It is vital that we develop a comprehensive and transparent building master plan to rebuild our deteriorating infrastructure and do so in a climate resilient way. As a teacher at Somerville High School before and after the building was rebuilt, I have seen firsthand what a poorly maintained school building looks like, and what investing in a proper school building can mean for our students. As City Councilor I will fight for funding and transparent processes to ensure that all students in Somerville attend safe, healthy, and accessible schools starting with the Winter Hill Community Innovation School.
We have seen this summer that the climate crisis is here. The biggest source of carbon emissions in Somerville is from our buildings and our first step is to stop making the problem worse. We need to rapidly implement the specialized energy code to achieve zero-emissions building standards for all new developments. We have to hire and train city staff to permit and inspect zero-emissions buildings effectively. Local workforce development to support new building methods will be critically important for this effort, and for retrofitting our existing buildings as well.
The Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act offer unprecedented opportunities for federal funding to launch a Green New Deal for Somerville. There are huge resources available for renovating our crumbling neighborhood schools as climate resilient schools, housing retrofits and heat pumps, electric school bus service, workforce development across new clean industries, robust stormwater systems, public electric vehicle charging, city-sponsored community solar power, and so much more. As we rebuild, we can reorient the infrastructure of the city towards pedestrian safety, calmer traffic, easy accessibility, and public green spaces. Local labor unions, climate advocates, businesses and community organizations have spent many years laying the groundwork for this moment. We are ready to start building a resilient, safe and joyful future for our community.
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