A Green Line trolley motors through a ceremonial ribbon pulled across the track at the brand-new Lechmere Station on Monday, March 21, 2022. The event celebrated the start of service on the Green Line Extension's Union Square branch. Photo by Chris Lisinski | State House News Service
As elected officials swarmed across the Charles River to celebrate Monday’s opening of the Green Line Extension to Union Square, community advocates warned that the benefits of the new rapid transit stops could be outweighed by displacement and skyrocketing real estate prices.
Several dozen activists rallied outside the MBTA’s Lechmere Station, calling for state and local officials to act quickly to prioritize development of affordable housing and erect guardrails around investment in the area.
While she stressed that she supports the extension, Community Action Agency of Somerville Director of Community Organizing Nicole Eigbrett said the newfound transit option carries “unintended consequences” and has prompted new development and rent increases aimed at more wealthy professionals enticed by the extension.
Somerville, she said, has transformed into a “gold mine for investors.”
“Gentrification isn’t really happening in Somerville by big corporations,” Eigbrett said. “It’s been by an army of smaller predatory investors, developers and greed-driven landlords who are reaping the profits and evicting the very people this train extension was supposedly built for.”
Vanessa Vela, who has lived in Somerville for 17 years, said her landlord approached her in September asking her and her family to leave while converting other units in the building and listing them at significantly higher rents.
After talking with her mother and son, who is in high school, Vela said she decided to reject an offer from her landlord that included several months of waived rent. Instead, she decided to fight to stay in her home, and since then, the landlord has refused to negotiate over a new lease, Vela said.
“My mom has been contributing to the economy of Massachusetts for over 30 years, but that’s not enough for them,” Vela, who like her mother is an immigrant from El Salvador, said. “They find us unworthy of living in Somerville because it has become a city for wealthy people. That’s all they want.”
Planners have been warning about the need to build more housing in Somerville to prevent the Green Line Extension from pushing rents up since at least 2014. A study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council published that year estimated that the city would need to add between 3,600 and 9,000 housing units between 2010 and 2030 to keep up with demand.
