Housing Project Dividing Progressives - SNN #39

A new, all-affordable apartment building will soon rise on the site of the old Boys & Girls Club, but it’s being built – in part – with non-union labor, which is dividing the city’s usually tight progressive community.

The $11 million dollar project that will rise at 181 Washington Street

is being constructed with federal, state and city money by the Somerville Community Corporation (SCC), in tandem with a private condominium development next door. About a year from now, there will be 35 new affordable apartments within steps of Union Square: 22 two-bedrooms, nine one-bedrooms and four three-bedroom apartments. Eight of the units will be Section 8 housing.

“In other cases, the rent is just brought down to a level, fully paid by the tenant, that’s below what they can find in a market like Somerville’s, which is really expensive,” SCC Executive Director Danny LeBlanc told Somerville Neighborhood News (SNN) in an interview on April 24. “It enables people of more modest means to be able to afford to live here.”

The non-Section 8 units will be available to individuals or families of moderate income levels, earning 60 percent of the Area Median Income. For a one-person household, that would be $41,400 or less. For a three-person household, $53,220 or less.

But while advocates of affordable housing are pleased the development will soon break ground, the city’s unions and advocates of union labor are having a different reaction, and on April 27, the Somerville Labor Coalition, representing six city unions, protested in a letter to LeBlanc.

“The SLC is asking Danny LeBlanc to use union labor at this particular site. We know that SCC wants good jobs, good paying union jobs, and they want to hire local residents, and we share those same philosophies,” SLC co-chair Ed Halloran, a member of the city’s Municipal Employees Association, told SNN.

Halloran was referring to the many initiatives spearheaded by SCC that focus on fair wages, transparency, and on community benefits, such as the Union United coalition, the Jobs for Somerville Committee and the First Source Jobs program.

The letter, signed by Halloran and other city workers, as well as by leaders from the city’s police, firefighter, school custodian and 911 operators unions, urges LeBlanc and the SCC to “stand behind its commitment to local, socially responsible, good jobs not only for private developers, but for its own publicly funded affordable housing projects in Somerville.”

The SCC has owns 184 affordable apartments and has built several condominium projects. In addition to the 181 Washington Street building, the organization will soon begin work to build 11 condos at 163 Glen Street.

“It’s time to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk,” the April 27 letter reads, using italics to add emphasis. “We cannot stand with you to push Federal Realty, US2 and others to do the right thing while turning a blind eye to SCC’s track record of building with low-road contractors. Doing so cheapens the common cause we’re striving for.”

LeBlanc admitted that the SCC is following “a difficult path.”

According to LeBlanc, while some of the subcontractors – electrical and steel – will be from unions, the general contractor, Dellbrook Construction of Quincy, which is also overseeing the condo building at 195 Washington, is a non-union contractor, due to the cost.

“We very much stand behind local hiring and fair wages for everybody,” LeBlanc said. “The economics of doing affordable housing, which is substantially government subsidized and also limited in terms of the actual budget that you have simply doesn’t us to afford the union bids that we get in all cases.”

In its letter, the Somerville Labor Coalition claims that affordable developments build in “surrounding communities,” and asks the SCC to reconsider its decisions.

“Isn’t it more than a little ironic that SCC says it wants to help keep Somerville affordable for working families, yet it is ‘too expensive’ to hire local-area residents who are the very people identified as a constituency for occupancy in the housing you plan to build?” the Coalition asks in the letter.

LeBlanc said that Dellwood was hired through a “competitive bidding process.”

“Our posture at SCC with the development that we do is: we do the very best we can by way of wages and all other conditions in quality of the project,” he said. “The bottom line is, we are building affordable housing that is critically needed in Somerville and we have to build it within the financial rules that we’re given.”

LeBlanc added that he does not know how many union hires or local hires might eventually work at the 181 Washington Street site.

“We are just now finalizing agreements with the subcontractors we’ve selected based on a bidding process,” he told SNN in an April 27 email.