FRAMINGHAM – Jim Cuddy’s response to my open letter to Mayor Spicer tries to divert attention from my central argument – exemplified by SMOC, human service agencies have targeted a disproportionate amount of their property acquisitions and programs in Framingham. He also ignores my thematic principle: equal opportunity requires communities to take equal responsibility.
As SMOC’s executive director since 1985, Mr. Cuddy has proven to be imaginative, entrepreneurial, and transformative. Unfortunately, he does not concede that he set the pathway for focusing primarily on Framingham while leaving richer towns barely touched. Yet he implicitly recognizes my central argument when he boasts that SMOC over the past five years has made a “strategic decision” to reduce the number of properties it owns in Framingham. So little, so late!
He claims my “letter is sloppily researched and misstates the facts to justify his thesis.”
He states that SMOC does not own 56 properties in Framingham, but he fails to correct the number. Why not? Because he does not want to acknowledge how many are here. I counted 56 from SMOC’s 2019 photographic portfolio of 162 properties it owns across the state. He then claims that I make “the unstated assertion that SMOC pays no property taxes in Framingham.” That is, he attributes to me a statement that he admits I did not make! Based on the 2020 assessors’ database, I tabulated SMOC’s 56 properties as valued at more than $35 million. My concern was not whether it pays any taxes. My point was that SMOC has an impressive portfolio of properties in Framingham as considered by city assessors. The market value of these properties is of course much higher. SMOC’s most recent financial statements posted on its website indicate it has assets of more than $100 million. As such, it is a major corporation in Framingham with commensurate influence over officials – local, state and federal.
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He is bothered by my citing my early life experience in Framingham, which he dismisses as my trying to adorn myself with “a cloak of respectability.” To be sure, I am a Framingham lifer, which is why the impact of SMOC and other agencies so troubles me. My childhood was in what SMOC’s own published history (Building a Culture of Care) describes as one of the “pockets of poverty” that existed in Framingham, Hopkinton, Holliston, and Natick when the organization began (p. 29).
Although I grew up in one of these pockets, we did not consider ourselves “poor”. We resided separately in two and three-decker homes. In contrast, according to the assessors’ database, two lots away from where our two-decker stood, SMOC owns all 44 units in two adjacent buildings. Such clustering of its clients runs counter to what we have learned about segregation. People are better off when they see themselves and are seen in the mainstream. Clustering services in one community does a disservice both to recipients and the non-recipient majority. Dispersal of services over several communities would be healthier for society as well as SMOC clients.
But dispersal is not what Mr. Cuddy directed. Only a year after he arrived, he led the formation of a subsidiary corporation, the South Middlesex Non-Profit Housing Corporation, which identified housing as the number one deficit in MetroWest towns, not simply Framingham. For Mr. Cuddy and his new corporation, however, lower property prices, not greater need, made Framingham the preferred target of expansion. And because homelessness has many causes – “alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, health issues, lack of employable skills, lack of education, criminal justice issues, and a poor tenant history…” it purchased properties to deal with these problems (Building a Culture, p. 85-86). It acted on the basis of convenience and cost by concentrating on Framingham rather than spreading across more resistant, lawyered-up, well-heeled surrounding towns.
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I did make a mistake with regard to the Advocates because the website of its New York namesake popped up each time. I belatedly discovered that I should have entered “Advocates Massachusetts.”
Nevertheless, my main point remains valid. It owns 19 properties in Framingham assessed at more than $10 million. It works closely with SMOC which has transferred its clients’ mental health services to it. In emails to its director I have asked where else does the Advocates own as many properties and how many of her leadership team and directors reside in Framingham. I await specific answers.
The result of SMOC’s focus on Framingham is that the community has drawn people with all of the problems associated above with homelessness. Surrounding towns can send their people with addictions and other issues here while they remain largely insulated from the burden placed on fire and police first responders as well as the majority of residents. This is not sharing equal responsibility.
Mayor Spicer, our two state representatives, Senator Spilka, and Congresswoman Clark owe Framingham a concerted effort to improve our downtown
and south side. State and federal funding have facilitated the acquisition of properties by human service agencies in Framingham, contributing to the unsightliness and public safety concerns that our city copes with while surrounding towns bask in gentrification.
Martin Quitt
Framingham
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