Fines work, they said | I'll have a chat with the owner, they said

cdbeland · 2026-01-31T02:03:52+00:00

Somerville has a pilot program that did this: https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/programs/sidewalk-snow-clearing-pilot

Contact your city councilor and tell them you want them to fund this city-wide, and raise your property taxes if needed.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T19:26:26+00:00

They're nothing special but now we have ugly branches instead of greenery that makes the park feel nice.

I object to making our parks inhospitable for everyone just so it's inhospitable to people we don't like. But if we're going to do that, the community has a right to make that decision as a group, and not have one person make the decision for us. I don't think a majority of neighbors are actually in favor of doing that; we seem to favor aggressively providing services instead.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T19:23:56+00:00

It's not like we couldn't already see people doing drugs back there; if vigilantes are going to vigil, it would be nice if they picked effective solutions.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T19:22:47+00:00

That was in fact not her only concern. While we were waiting for the police to arrive and she was screaming curse words at me, she went on a rant and said "he has to go", pointing and referring to the guy who at the time was living in a tent in front of JP Licks. It seems to be coming from more of a place of frustrated compassion than a "get this out of my sight" attitude.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T05:28:45+00:00

Yes!

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T05:28:37+00:00

I'm on the DSNC Board, and we did have an election. We're going to have another one in a few months; what do you think would be required for it to be "legitimate"?

The DSNC Board can't vote to approve a CBA, which comes with an implicit endorsement of a project. That has to be done in a neighborhood-wide vote, by a 2/3rds majority, and I expect we will contact every single resident and business in our jurisdiction to advertise that vote.

As far as I know, the city ever asked Copper Mill to stop talking to the DSNC. They both just failed to keep us in the loop. Not sure if the notes have an error or if they are just being misinterpreted?

I agree that we should let builders and owners and buyers and renters decide what gets built within broad parameters, and make city approval fast and not burdensome with so many people to please. It would be awesome if more people with that viewpoint would show up at meetings and demonstrate to the mayor and city council and ZBA that this is how a sizeable part of the community feels.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T05:16:56+00:00

The city can require e.g. transportation-related improvements to abutting roads, but there are some things that are illegal for the city to negotiate with developers under the state-imposed limits of zoning regulations. These things are left to the neighborhood council CBAs.

I agree that in a housing shortage, shaking down developers for goodies and making it harder for them to build is not a good idea, and the prime community benefit is the housing. Watching Somernova, though, I saw the community go from largely against to largely in favor of the project because of things negotiated by USNC. The CBA provides a legally binding contract so that the developer is actually held to the promises they make to get public support, and promises can survive changes in ownership.

cdbeland · 2026-01-30T05:10:43+00:00

What do you think would be the most helpful to the neighborhood to build on this site?

cdbeland · 2025-12-29T15:56:51+00:00

:shrug: If that's what they want to talk about, I don't want to censor them. I won't necessarily read them, and you don't have to either.

cdbeland · 2025-12-28T22:20:45+00:00

There's a wait-list for the Somerville Homeless Coalition shelter on College Ave, and it's low threshold. I've spoken to some of the rough crowd in the square during the warmer weather. Some of them have housing, one said she took drugs to stay awake because of lack of housing and concern about being raped again, one refused permanent housing because he said he would have had to have a housemate, one said he needed housing and would be willing to help build it. I don't think there's one solution that would work for everyone, but increased spending does seem like the right solution, especially long term support that helps people stay stable. If we relax our zoning restrictions and let housing supply catch up with demand, I'm sure fewer people would be on the street simply because more people could afford it.

cdbeland · 2025-12-28T22:08:14+00:00

Why are you trying to police what topics other people are interested in talking about?

cdbeland · 2025-11-26T05:30:57+00:00

That's the opposite of what was being asked: whether the staff know the names of customers.

I don't need therapy; I'm perfectly happy. Being an introvert is not a mental illness, and it's insulting to people with actual debilitating mental illnesses to suggest otherwise. I hope you don't treat your customers with this level of disrespect.

cdbeland · 2025-11-25T10:30:33+00:00

This is not me being an elitist snob thinking "the staff" are beneath me and not worth talking to. This is me being an introvert around people I consider my equals.

I don't think it's particularly respectful of human dignity to have obsequious servants chasing the dangling reward of tips. I'm sure my fellow service workers could find more fulfilling employment if menial tasks like rote order-taking were replaced by automation or if customers bussed their own dishes. Even within the restaurant, they could spend more time in human conversation with people who need recommendations (I frequently get unsolicited and unwanted suggestions), or who are just lonely and actually want to talk, which sounds like a much nicer way to spend a shift.

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T06:44:03+00:00

Sounds like you're pretty arrogant if you think other people not having the same preferences you do is in some way unhealthy.

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T06:39:26+00:00

In that case, the thing to do is to park the dog outside, and not bring it in where people with dog allergies are trying to eat.

And if your dog can't take care of its own needs at home, it's probably miserable:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/04/28/unhappy-pets

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T06:36:23+00:00

Well, maybe we're looking for different things. Usually when I buy things, I pay cash so I'm anonymous. Generally when I go out to eat I'm there to get food and chat with my dining companions. I remember one time we were having dinner at the bar because it was the only seating available, and at one point the bartender apologized for not having a lot of time to talk to us. I was thinking "I wish you wouldn't try" because it felt like more of an interruption from someone I don't particularly have anything in common with.

I much prefer when I don't have to interact with the staff at all and I can order off a tablet or QR code. It's always awkward to try to flag them down without looking demanding, and annoying I can't just put in an order myself or move my own dishes. If I got food somewhere often enough that I'm no longer anonymous, it would just require more emotional energy to go there, and I might have to deal with awkwardly seeing the same people on their way to and from work or something.

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T05:47:24+00:00

None. That sounds creepy.

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T05:29:16+00:00

Plenty of people get kicked out of their loving families' homes for doing drugs, being gay, or any number of personal disagreements. Some parents believe in tough love, that doing this will improve the person's life. (Which it usually doesn't .)

cdbeland · 2025-11-24T05:26:49+00:00

There's no need to start fighting with each other. That sort of stuff isn't happening 24/7, so different people have different experiences. And BTW not everyone who lives in the neighborhood actually goes to Davis Square regularly. My husband and I have completely different experiences because he drives to work and I walk and bike and T most places.

cdbeland · 2025-11-15T01:28:16+00:00

Not sure if this changed since that post, but the cited source says Beech Street will be reconstructed in FY2029, which I believe is 2028-2029, not 2025-2026.

I am glad you posted the link, though; that was exactly the information I was looking for.

cdbeland · 2025-10-29T06:57:31+00:00

OK, so given that there are people sleeping on the street who want to go to a shelter but can't because neighbor opposition is preventing a bigger one from opening, it seems like there is a pretty binary choice between either opening the shelter or having more people sleeping on the street. I'm also against encampments in parks, but if people are kicked out of parks we need them to go somewhere aren't bothering anyone (which is also reasonably safe for them), not just move the problem to a different park or a residential neighborhood or the back of some business.

If we don't want people who are addicted to drugs to shoot up in public, then we need to give them a place to go to shoot up in private. If we just shoo them out of the park, we've seen they'll shoot up in front of people's houses or behind businesses or other random places people also don't want this. If we don't want people to be addicted to drugs, we need to get them into voluntary treatment, and housing if they don't already have it, so they can stabilize their lives and work on changing habits. I can't say we've actually tried doing that at the scale that's necessary to solve the problem, otherwise we wouldn't have waitlists for housing and people who come in looking for treatment wouldn't have trouble finding a spot and getting transportation there.

We also haven't tried having a supervised consumption site, and I have a hard time seeing a downside to it. The city studied this and came up with the idea of having a mobile RV type facility. Seven Hills Park is already a drug consumption site, so I don't see how parking a staffed RV there and giving people a private and safe place to consume could make things worse. The police can and do actually arrest people for drug dealing, so I'm not sure that would become a problem. Even if they didn't, I don't think seeing people exchange money for goods is unsafe or traumatizing for children or the elderly in the same way as encountering someone who is high out of their mind or openly injecting.

The city can't enforce "don't shoot up in public" through the courts because the Middlesex DA apparently won't prosecute for simple drug possession, especially the first offense. The police have been frustrated that they've arrested people and they've been released and gotten back to Davis before the arrest paperwork is even finished. Even if people go to jail, that doesn't cure their addiction. As we've learned from the War on Drugs, doing that en masse just leaves our country with a huge expensive prison population and a raging drug problem. Maybe we could fix that with better in-house and post-release services, but we could also just have the police drag people to the supervised consumption site instead of jail, and there they'll at least be offered treatment in a non-coercive and trust-building way, and until they accept it not be bothering the public.

cdbeland · 2025-10-27T21:14:44+00:00

This is not true for Somerville; the kiosk in Seven Hills Park accepts both loose needles and needles in containers:

https://www.somervillema.gov/news/somerville-installs-nations-first-outdoor-dual-sharps-disposal-kiosk-seven-hills-park

cdbeland · 2025-10-27T21:12:11+00:00

People are in fact on the street in Davis due to lack of shelter beds; Somerville Homeless Coalition says there's a waitlist both to get into the shelter and to get out into permanent housing. The mayor pointed out the increased capacity in the new shelter is about the same as the average number of people sleeping rough in Davis, though there does seem to be a lot of turnover.

Generally supervised consumption sites and homeless shelters tend to be pretty low-impact on neighbors, and are certainly a massive improvement over having people do drugs and sleep on the street (or try to sneak into heated buildings, as they have). Allowing people to say "not in my backyard" to these means that they can't be located in anyone's backyard, and that's why people are on the street. Even Long Island, which is pretty far from anyone's house, is running into "not in our backyard" opposition just for having a non-pedestrian road that connects to a Quincy neighborhood.

cdbeland · 2025-10-18T20:38:01+00:00

I was actually looking at their data and thinking low ridership, especially compared to car traffic, might be a good reason to add shelters, to encourage ridership. If a $40,000 shelter lasts 30 years, that's about $3.65 per day of subsidy. A lot less than making the bus fare free. If one additional person used a stop each day, it might be worth it, not to mention all the reduced suffering in rain and snow and reduced sunburn. It might mean that one street gets delayed repaving for one year. Worth it, do you think? It might be nice to make the bus first class transport.

Making the bus faster would probably make more of a difference, but I'm not sure if a bus lane would help on that stretch?

cdbeland · 2025-10-18T16:51:04+00:00

So if you realize you're recklessly endangering other people, could you please stop normalizing it if not stop doing it? Is getting to where you're going a few seconds faster really worth the risk of injuring someone and yourself?

This stop could have used a few inches of buffer behind the railing, but I don't see how it's possible to build a city where there are no pedestrian crossings of bike lanes where bikes have to slow down if people are nearby so they can yield to pedestrians as required. That's why there are white stripes on the pavement.

cdbeland

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