Holly Simione is one of nine newcomers seeking one of the Somerville City Council’s four at-large positions, nomination papers showed on Sunday.
After four years on the city’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities, which she chairs, serving on the council would be way to “do more for the broader community,” with helping find solutions to a housing crisis a priority, Simione said.
“A lot of people feel that by building more housing, just as with most commodities, the price will lower. But that’s not the case in housing, because in our situation, people are willing to pay $5,000 a month to rent an apartment and live in Somerville,” she said.
Construction has become even more expensive due to federal tariffs affecting the price of materials, something Simione has seen as a human services professional in her day job as a case manager at Incompass Human Services, a Chelmsford agency that supports people in the Lawrence and Lowell area with intellectual and developmental disabilities, autism and brain injuries, including in group homes.
“Until we can find a way to build affordable housing that not only serves people that want to live in a one-bedroom but for families to stay here, we really don’t have a lot of equity in that,” Simione continued.
Simione says that these challenges can be countered in part by training and empowering city employees, including through fair pay.
She also calls for communal solutions. “I really applaud some of the programming that our city has done where we’re asking residents to pitch in and help,” she said, referring to Somerville’s community gardening and tree adoption programs.
“Taking care of each other and considering each other as neighbors is really part of what I learned from my parents,” said Simione, whose parents were artists and health care advocates, and whose father did union work.
The Commission for Persons with Disabilities – which this month awarded scholarships of $5,000 each to 14 Somerville high schoolers – is council-appointed, and Simione says she works closely with the council as chair.
Before joining the commission, Simione served on the Massachusetts Developmental Disability Council, members of which are appointed by the governor. Simione sat on the council between 2017 and 2023, during which time Charlie Baker served as governor. Simione was elected chair in 2021. “That’s where I learned how law works,” Simione said of the state council.
Others seeking council seats in November include Jon Link, Scott Istvan, Christopher Ryan Spicer, Tuesday N. Thomas, Marianne Walles, Jack Perenick, Justin Klekota and Ari Iaccarino. Two incumbents, Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah, will seek reelection, while Willie Burnley Jr. and Jake Wilson will challenge Katjana Ballantyne for mayor.
Simione holds an official campaign kickoff event at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Sally O’Brien’s in Union Square.
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“A lot of people feel that by building more housing, just as with most commodities, the price will lower. But that’s not the case in housing, because in our situation, people are willing to pay $5,000 a month to rent an apartment and live in Somerville,” she said.
I hope she changes her mind on this. The vast majority of evidence indicates that more housing does make housing more affordable, as this literature review finds:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2418044