WORCESTER – District 4 Councilor Sarai Rivera called Tuesday for an update on a report she requested about the “over-saturation of rooming houses, shelters and programs in specific city streets, neighborhoods and districts” and creating a more equitable zoning process.
A report produced for the Public Health and Human Services Committee Rivera chairs showed the majority of lodging houses in the city are in Districts 2 and 4.
“The over-saturation is just to the point that it’s really affecting quality of life. … It’s also affecting economic development, it’s affecting neighborhoods’ (ability) to kind of be able to reestablish themselves,” Rivera said.
It is not a “not in my backyard” situation, according to Rivera, but is about not having everything in their backyard. She said she was calling on all the districts in the city to carry the responsibility of it.
Rivera equated teachers being able to work better when they are working with five students than when they were dealing with 30.
District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson said three people told her they were selling their homes on Lincoln Street because they believe the quality of life is no longer there. She also said a business was unable to get a license to operate from the state because it did not believe “it was a safe area to conduct their business.”
“This is in no way [saying] that we should not be providing services but people do not need to be clustered into one area,” Mero-Carlson said.
District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said she welcomed the discussion about equitable zoning laws but didn’t want the discussion to happen in a vacuum.
Haxhiaj discussed the struggles and pushback in the community she faced when she agreed to have the winter shelter in her district at Blessed Sacrament for the 2022-23 winter season.
Haxhiaj said she felt very alone in that struggle and she faced neighborhoods and neighbors who did not want to and would not say yes to having a shelter in their area.
The council moved to send Rivera’s request regarding the over-saturation of the agencies and looking at decentralizing rooming houses and shelters into multiple locations and demographically diverse areas to the city manager.
Rivera also requested the city manager organize a second meeting between Main South residents and business owners and Spectrum Health, which is looking to open a methadone clinic at 1023 Main St.
During a first meeting with Spectrum Health, Rivera said it was a disheartening display of leadership where the executive director was not answering the questions that were asked of him, which led some community members to leave before asking questions they had.
Rivera called the executive director “rude” and Councilor At-Large Kate Toomey echoed those comments saying he showed a great disrespect to the community.
The council voted to send Rivera’s request for a meeting to the city manager.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
