Good evening.

This is the committee for housing and community development and equity.

I am City Councillor at large, Kristen Strasso.

Today is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026.

And it is 6.02 p.m.

We are broadcasting this meeting live in person, hybrid setting.

And a link post meeting to order.

All right, this is real quick.

Council Say.

Council link.

So do we wonderful?

Can we do the please scale fifth?

Counseling link is craft in your indeed.

Okay, hopefully we have a little bit.

So the RCA in the area where you can't access these text of all one of us with the property lecture.

So pursue into chapter two of the access five city council committee will be conducted for posting money, then you're reporting transfer for other proceedings as soon as possible.

And for the meeting on the city is the website and the role.

So uh our first item is the pitting minutes or item two six zero.

Three six six January 28th, 26th.

Also six or three so four of the community scores.

So our first item piece is item 2650.

Thank you.

Always thank you very much, madam chair.

Um sure.

Uh I'm gonna go through briefly some of the data that I presented in memorandum that should have gone out last week.

Um, but to update you on where things are um with the opposite task disability and the issues that we look at.

So first we just recorded some OHS case data.

Um I wouldn't know if this document the last time we came in here and we spoke with you to update you.

Data was through September of 2025.

So this period that I'm talking about now is a five-month period from October 2025 to the end of February 2026.

Um, and during that five-month period, we had 505 new um new requests for assistance with 471 unique households, meaning not 25 of them repeated, but we're not fixed that five-month period of time that we're looking for assistance with um with some kind of housing security services.

So we have about 94 unique new requests for assistance each month.

Um data about this is that um 37% of those households or 186% of the of those referrals were at risk of displacement, and if those at risk of displacement, 94 have already received the notes to quit or some of the classes complete, um, which formed the starts of the process.

About half of these um residents spoke a language other than English, which as you know is is disproportionate to the populations in the city of Somerville, so it does tell us that a lot of the housing instability um is greatest in our living communities.

Um, and we also had um in addition to that, about a quarter of the households that we'd have to services for us requested assistance to pay for over.

Um moving on in terms of rental assistance.

Between all three programs, CAS, the homeless coalition, and RAF, which is the state rental assistance program during this five-month period.

We paid out 485,000 approximately in rental assistance, both for startup costs, rental assistance careers, and prospective rent on behalf of Somerville residents.

And what I thought I would do is just do a little comparison of this five-month period with those were last year.

I think probably everybody who knows that we are looking at a tough financial situation in the city here.

So we had in the past about 2.1 million dollars in funding annually for rental assistance.

That money is scheduled to be depleted in the fall.

I think the mayor and the city council, I hope everybody will do their best to figure out sources of funds to have a robust program going forward.

But in anticipation of this, we have tightened our criteria a little bit.

So we're trying to figure out how tightening of criteria may or may not affect the number of evictions that we'll see.

So in the period of January of 2025 through September of 2025, we paid out an average, we paid out 259,000 a month for rentals.

In the last five months, it is now less than half.

So it was $97,000 a month, which is again a little bit less than half the amount we had been paid.

And I'd say a couple of things about that.

One is that we have tightened criteria.

So where there are people that are coming back again and again and again.

We look at what their housing stability plans are.

We try to look at what we can do to move them into permanent affordable housing, but we've been a little stricter at saying here were the four things that you're supposed to do, and maybe they did them and maybe they do.

So some changes due to that to the criteria.

Also, there were periods where either CAS or SHC were closed, particularly around the holidays at the city because this getting, you know, this goes over December or part of January.

So I think some of the reduction in number amount of money paid out was due to staff closures or people closing down intake, sort of between I'd say the you know, December in December again.

So we'll see in the next report where we are and how much we're spending per month going forward in rental assistance.

Um, and as you'll see, it doesn't look yet like this is impacted on the eviction data, but I want to be honest in saying that if we're giving out less rental assistance at some points, it is inevitable that there will be some increase in the number of evictions based on the amount of money that's available to folks for rental assistance.

And just turning to the eviction data for a moment, you can see um we there were in this five-month period 105 summary process cases filed, and non-payment of rent, 86% of those cases are not.

So we can show you again, as I say directly, the rental assistance is so clearly linked to the overall number of people that are likely to find themselves with executions for being evicted.