Planning for the Needs of Children and Families

I love the end (and start!) of the school year, but the hardest part is knowing that as the school-year wraps up, for some, it’s a time of transition and uncertainty. It's the end of stable routines. The hardest part is seeing a pile of record transfer request forms in the school office, knowing many families are moving, mainly because they could not find an affordable place to live in Somerville. Somerville’s loss is the gain of Everett, Revere, Lynn, Saugus, and places farther north or west. I hope our kids thrive in those districts. We will miss you and all you have to contribute.

Kids in Somerville are almost twice as likely to be living in poverty than the rest of the population. Families at many income levels face more hurdles than others to find a place to live – they have less income, they have more expenses (like childcare), they experience more housing discrimination, and they need more space. If families have kids enrolled in the public schools, they are deeply invested in the municipal boundaries. Moving even just block into a new city means a moving to new school district and thus a complete change in their kids’ worlds. (See above for a table that shows the decline in the numbers of children, even just between 2000 and 2010).

We have a lot of work to do on affordability. As we do, we need to pay special attention to how systems and policies impact children, who are both a particularly vulnerable and, in my opinion, a particularly wonderful part of our community. Pictured here are my daughter, Nancy, and some of her awesome classmates who won the City’s Fair Housing Contest this spring. Kids have seen friends move each month and year, and it's hard to say goodbye. They understand what's at stake.

I think we have to take a lot of steps, and all of them will require both the best technical tools and lots of community discussion. First and foremost, however, I think we have to talk to families to understand their hopes and challenges.

Here’s where I think we should focus, based on my experiences with children and families in Somerville and elsewhere:

• Traditional neighborhoods: I believe we need to invest in programs like the 100 homes effort that takes properties off the speculative market. I think most families would like to live in one of Somerville’s traditional homes that often will have its own entrance, often a shared backyard, and proximity to stores, schools, bus/T lines, and other kids.
• New housing: When we hope to have families live in new housing, I would like to see the housing and neighborhoods be designed with families in mind, such as building units with a view of shared outdoor space or walking distance to a school.
• Ownership: I believe we should focus on ownership opportunities. Anyone who wishes to own should ideally have a path to ownership.
• All income levels: I believe we need to create programs that support families at all different income levels, from the lowest income earners to those for who need less subsidy.
• Other affordability factors: I would like to see the City and District greatly increase its investment in out-of-school time programming and in health and human services. I would like to see public buildings open all the time for community use and a subsidy for transportation. We should be thinking of how systems work together to make life with kids (especially in a small space with limited resources or adult time) easy and happy vs. hard and stressful.

What are the tools we can use to achieve these goals? Many issues need to be resolved at the State level, including ways to pressure communities less dense than Somerville to build more housing. We need to change the state’s (and nation’s) education funding and accountability systems that currently systematically penalize communities for welcoming families – especially lower income families.

Locally, I think we need to bring every tool to bear, even though most steps will be difficult. Those include:

• Building incentives for family-friendly housing into the new citywide zoning;
• Making sure developers to do as much as possible to build affordable and family-friendly housing;
• Moving ahead with zoning and projects, especially those that increase commercial development, even though we have incomplete information or they are still a work in progress;
• Tapping into the extraordinary appreciation of home values by giving all homeowners access to tax deferral programs and by implementing a thoughtfully considered transfer fee;
• Creating a right-of-first refusal program to enable long-time tenants to purchase equity in their homes with funding from an affordable housing trust;
• Building higher density in transformative districts, even though neighborhoods will struggle with growing pains;
• Controlling budget expenses to stall tax increases, which will mean some austerity in the funding of initiatives;
• Finding a way to and go slow on some big capital projects that, unfortunately, we desperately need; and
• Finding ways to create and enforce a “car-free” property status and then allowing for higher density (such as development of accessory units) or more open space without increased cars.

On top of all that, we need to keep trying to build community so that we understand one another’s needs and keep paying attention to the day-to-day quality of life issues, like rats and cut-through traffic, that impact people’s sense of safety and peace of mind. Plus, we need to continue working to increase transparency, reform our powerful boards like the SRA, and pay attention to campaign finance, all of which will (I hope!) increase trust in the process. Whew… that’s a lot to worry about.

Those are my thoughts, but I am still learning and I learn more each day as I talk to people while door knocking… and we all will have to. There aren’t many examples in the US of communities that have figured this out. Let me know what you think!