Somerville Community Corporation's deep community roots provide a 'moral compass' for its work
This is the first in an occasional series of articles about the many partners MassHousing works with to fulfill its affordable housing mission

Since 1969, the Somerville Community Corporation has served the city with a focus on sustaining affordability and livability for lower income residents and recent immigrants and generational descendants of earlier immigrants.
"SCC is truly a community-based organization with a strong board of directors and a large and very active membership base," says CEO Danny LeBlanc. "That rootedness gives us both a very reliable moral compass about what needs to be done in our community, as well as the community support we need to move our efforts forward."
SCC creates housing for families earning anywhere from less than 30% to 110% of the Area Median Income; homeless families and individuals; and, clients of the state Department of Mental Health.
MassHousing has helped finance 7 SCC rental communities through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) for a total of 184 affordable units and $5.6 million in AHTF financing. MassHousing manages the AHTF on behalf of the state Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).
"Since its inception nearly 15 years ago, the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Trust Fund has been a crucial source of funding for almost every project SCC has done in that time period," said LeBlanc. "As administered by MassHousing, the Trust Fund has filled funding gaps for critically needed affordable housing projects in a manner flexible enough to help make challenging projects work."
MassHousing also works closely with SCC to educate first-time homebuyers and provide services for homeowners.
LeBlanc said that "MassHousing's strong support for first-time homebuyers – including presentations in our homebuyer education classes, mortgage products for first-time homebuyers, and The Road Home online curriculum for first-time buyers – are all important pieces of SCC's homebuyer program which is serving more than 300 people per year.
While SCC has long focused most of its attention on affordable housing development, ownership, and policy issues, it began in 2006 to focus greater energy on the other side of the affordability equation – the sufficiency of incomes of Somerville residents to sustain themselves in the city. SCC is now also focused on the incomes and assets of residents, as well as on the affordability of the housing stock, appreciating that the market will continue to drive housing costs up in Somerville.
As such, SCC has added a strong array of financial asset building programs over the last several years, including intensive classes; one-time workshops; Individual Development Account (IDA) matched savings accounts; and, one-on-one counseling.
St. Polycarp Apartments in Somerville was developed by SCC and funded by the AHTF
"We take pride in delivering our programs well, from the development of affordable housing to our asset building programs such as Financial Education, first-time homebuyer education, and our new First Source program connecting local low-income residents to job opportunities in Somerville," LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said developing affordable rental housing in Somerville will continue to be challenging with the city emerging as one of the hottest real estate markets in the state.
"Both the cost and competition for land in Somerville are at an all-time high, making it increasingly difficult to even gain site control over properties in order to put projects forward," he noted. "Construction costs and other factors, along with the high acquisition cost, drive the per-unit development costs up, making it difficult to bring projects into the state financing agencies at an acceptable per-unit development cost."
LeBlanc points out the need for collaboration. "SCC is seeking new opportunities in creative partnerships with private sector developers, and in opportunities to drive publicly controlled land towards affordable housing development," he said. We are also seeking to acquire small properties – nearly two-thirds of Somerville's existing housing stock is in two, three and four-family structures – to both get them off the speculative real estate market and to sustain them as long-term, deed-restricted affordable housing."
LeBlanc says that SCC "maintains an overarching mission-based commitment to sustaining an economically diverse community, despite the very hot market conditions that would displace many low and moderate income people from Somerville."
"We will continue to look for new and creative ways to do that, and will also count on our relationship with MassHousing to work with us to implement creative solutions to create and sustain as many affordable housing options as possible," LeBlanc added.
75 Cross Street was financed with the AHTF and developed by the SCC
"SCC has been a strong partner with MassHousing for a long time and is well respected for the work it does in Somerville, particularly the quality affordable rental housing it has developed over the years," said MassHousing Executive Director Tom Gleason. "I think a large part of SCC's success is that they realize the most important part of what they do is the people they serve and advocate for."
SCC is a membership-based organization with nearly 400 formal members and 1,500 constituents, and works to influence affordable housing policy and neighborhood quality of life improvements. Its members organize for affordable housing, local jobs, and grassroots planning, and work to develop leadership skills through SCC's annual Leadership Development Institute.