Public meeting on the zoning overhaul

[olszowka.livejournal.com]

There is a CRITICAL public meeting coming up that volunteers from Zone Smart have been calling our members about this week. Many of you committed to attending, some of you did not pickup so this email is to tell you that YOUR PRESENCE IS NEEDED. Here are the details:

What: Somerville Zoning Overhaul Public Meeting on Neighborhoods - http://www.somervillema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2015-11-12%20Zoning%20Meeting%20Poster.pdf

When: Monday at 6:30pm (Please come at 5:30pm, an hour beforehand, if you can in order to get organized, handout buttons to wear, and maximize our impact)

Where: 259 Lowell Street at the VNA Community Room.

Why: To show the Aldermen that we demand removal of the "no more than 4 unrelated" restriction from the zoning code. It raises housing costs by forcing bedrooms to stay unrented, it increases environmental burden by forcing new development, it makes most Co-op housing illegal, and it is unfair to home owners and tenants alike.

How Can You Help:
1. PLEASE CONFIRM WHETHER OR NOT YOU CAN ATTEND. If you can make it to the 5:30pm meeting (or anytime before 6:30pm) please indicate that as well.
2. Spread the word. Go to our Facebook Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/497731313721533/ and share the event with others, and click "Going"

This ordinance will change when we unite and demand that it does, and we will never have a better opportunity than this overhaul. Please come out Monday night and join us.

Zone Smart Somerville
No More Than 4 Unrelated Is Outdated
www.zonesmartsomerville.org

Comments

Reasons to oppose the rental occupancy limit

[elizabeth weinbloom (from livejournal.com)]

I strongly oppose the ban on more than four unrelated tenants in a unit, and I support replacing this ban with a limit on the number of occupants per bedroom, per #of square feet, or per fire escape, regardless of family status. (note: I am not affiliated with Zone Smart)

Not sure how you feel? Here are some reasons to oppose the existing ban:

- It is discriminatory on the basis of marital and family status. If the intent of the ordinance is to limit overcrowding, why does it matter whether the occupants are blood relatives? If a unit is unsafe for five friends, it is also unsafe for five siblings.

- It unfairly targets Tufts students. A few months ago I spoke to a group of Tufts undergrads about this ordinance, and almost every student present had themselves or a friend been forced to move because their landlords received warnings from the city. I did not meet any households of non-students who had received official warnings about violating this ban.

- It doesn't actually prevent overcrowding. Under the current ordinance, it is perfectly legal to have four unrelated tenants sharing a studio apartment. And if the tenants are a family, then the landlord can squish them in like sardines with no limit. Meanwhile, having five roommates in a house or unit with five bedrooms is against the law. A revised ordinance based on square footage or number of bedrooms -- without regard to family status -- would do a much better job of actually preventing overcrowding.

- It creates unsafe situations for vulnerable tenants. The current ban encourages tenants to illegally sublet and otherwise go behind their landlord's back in order to keep their households together in violation of this ban (this is especially the case with Tufts students who may share bedrooms to keep costs down, as is perfectly normal for students, as well as with other cost-burdened populations). This creates a situation where tenants are unable to access appropriate recourses against actual bad landlords.

- It makes co-ops essentially illegal. Co-ops are among the most stable, community-oriented, and long-term household units there are outside of nuclear families. Why would we want to discourage this living arrangement?

- It keeps bedrooms off the market. Landlords with larger units are incentivized to rent to fewer individuals than a unit can support, or to split up our city's rare larger units and even rarer single-family houses into smaller, more expensive units.

I'm happy to discuss this issue further with anyone who is interested, and I hope to see a big turn-out at the hearing on Monday!

RE: Reasons to oppose the rental occupancy limit

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming the landlords of Tufts students got warning letters because Tufts had to provide a list of students and their addresses to the city. For people unaffiliated with a university, the city has no way of knowing how many people live in an apartment.

The blood relative exception is a tricky one. On the one hand, the safety issue is the same whether people are related or not, and it's a privacy violation for the city to inquire about who is related or not. On the other hand, people have a fundamental right to have as many children as they want, and should not be evicted for it.

Though if the rules are made more sensible, there will be far fewer potential violators, related or not. From a pure health and safety perspective, most units could house 3 or more people per bedroom. So that's the limit I'd support, assuming we need one at all.

RE: Reasons to oppose the rental occupancy limit

[elizabeth weinbloom (from livejournal.com)]

You're correct about the Tufts information. However, this last year was the first time (at least the first time in anyone's memory I've spoken to) that the city requested this information from Tufts, which gave the city the ability to crack down on Tufts landlords. That's certainly unequal enforcement.

You're also right that it's a privacy violation for the city to inquire about who is related. Since the discriminatory-by-blood-relation aspect of the ordinance is essentially unenforceable, why have it at all?

>>people have a fundamental right to have as many children as they want, and should not be evicted for it.<<

On the plus side, no one is being *evicted* over this ordinance; it's the landlords who get in trouble, not the tenants. But as a result, the landlords don't renew the leases of groups of tenants who are above the limits set by this ordinance.

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