Developers in Somerville are making insane amounts of money on anything that they develop, flip, and sell. The demand that is driven by these crazy high returns is pushing for change among existing homeowners and residents... Not all of this change is good. After all, much of it is being fueled by greed and tons of money. Proponents are calling for Zoning Changes to accelerate this process but they contend the change is good without having any reason that is based on credible assumptions or even sound data.

Building more for the sake of building won't and has not created more affordable housing. The same investors and developers steering these changes are the same folks that have been buying the homes and raising the rents "Hundreds of thousands of single-family homes are now in the hands of giant companies, wall street funds — squeezing renters for revenue and putting the American dream even further out of reach." https://www.globest.com/2021/07/29/investors-are-aggressively-bidding-up-apartment-prices-as-housing-shortages-loom/?

Here in Somerville: “They have been selling all of the buildings around and raising the rents,” Vela said.

Vela still has a deal with her old landlord, but the new owner has threatened to evict her and is now asking more than $3,000 a month for similar units in her building, way more than the vet tech can afford.

“Well the rich keep getting rich,” she said.

The flurry of new apartments going up nearby shows that investors believe they’ve found a gold mine on the Green Line, even as some first day riders celebrated." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/green-line-extension-raising-concerns-over-higher-rent-prices-in-somerville/ar-AAVlBLt

"Today, they’re using the urban housing crisis as a pretext to roll back environmental protections, curtail local democracy, and deregulate, or more precisely, re-regulate land use in behalf of property and finance capital. " ... " “regulatory hurdles are a bogeyman for the housing crunch.” Baxamusa backs up this claim with evidence from his own city of San Diego, where, downtown, “there is virtually no NIMBYism, and development permitting is mostly by right,” yet “private developers are building fewer units than the zoning allows, and avoiding building affordable housing altogether, despite a tower of regulatory incentives.” More affordable housing is “being demolished than [being] built.” Since 2015, the unsheltered homeless population downtown has spiked 60 percent." https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hsieh-moretti-affordable-housing-free-market-fantasy