The Sarah Mendelsohn Band set up its amps and pedal boards on a brick plaza turned into a stage, preparing for a Down in Davis, a weekly concert series in Davis Square’s Statue Park that started in early May.
Davis sat mostly empty throughout the afternoon. But as the band played its first song just after 5 p.m. June 26, more than 20 people congregated, sitting at benches and crowding the makeshift stage.
This sight differed greatly from how Davis looked only a year ago, when tens of unhoused people populated the Somerville square and many others avoided it.
There are still unhoused people in the square. A handful sat behind the stage during the concert. Some talked with each other, while another slept on a concrete wall. A police officer kept an eye on them, but had no reason to intervene.
“Once the music starts playing, people will still be hanging around. And that’s great too. It’s for everybody who’s around the square. As long as no one’s causing direct issues, I hope it’s good for them as well,” said Aidan Rice, one of the event’s organizers.
Down in Davis is part of a wider collective effort to inject life into Davis Square and help the people in it. Some bring art and culture back to Statue Park, while others provide beds so people don’t have to sleep on the concrete.
Elaine Almquist, president of the Davis Square Neighborhood Council, said Monday that she’s not aware of a dramatic turnaround – but she knows the activation and cultural events are meant at least in part to dissuade people from illegal behavior in public. But the response to efforts is good: “What people have told me about the performances is they’ve really enjoyed them,” Almquist said. The carving out of recreation space from an unused traffic lane? Another success. “Every time I go through, there’s people sitting at the picnic tables and in the chairs reading, working on a laptop, eating lunch.”
Losing its character
Davis Square seemed to have lost its arty nature since the Covid pandemic. Rice, who moved to Somerville from Ohio, said he had never experienced the Davis Square his friends had told him about.
Part of this was because of an influx of unhoused people in Davis Square in the years following Covid. Michael Libby, the executive director of the Somerville Homeless Coalition, said people may be coming from Mass and Cass, the Roxbury intersection known for its large unhoused encampments. He said some may have become unhoused due to the pandemic.
The first tents pitched in Statue Park were in 2023, in front of J.P. Licks. Libby said they congregated in the square because it’s their only option. “It’s such a densely populated city. There’s no place to really hide or find a safe place that you’re not visible, so things are much more visible,” Libby said.
Visitors complained about open-air drug use and needles on the ground, as well as verbal harassment – and in late 2024 one unhoused man chased passersby with a hatchet.
Soon enough, people stopped coming to the square. With less foot traffic, the businesses in the area struggled. The community’s frustration came to a head at a community meeting in October, where residents blamed then-mayor Katjana Ballantyne for not doing enough to maintain public safety.
Bringing the music
Rice and the other Down in Davis organizers wanted to bring a sense of positivity back to the square. That’s when they came up with the idea for the free concert series. Rice said that the concert series has met its goal of making it more enjoyable to be in Davis Square on a Friday. He said he noticed more people coming to the square when the musicians perform.
Organizers worried there would be confrontations, but attendees have not faced issues from unhoused people during the concerts, Rice said. Somerville police officers “have helped when we need them to.”
Along with the concerts, buskers can play in Davis Square Plaza. Asana Partners, a North Carolina property developer, agreed in May to allow buskers to use the space outside of its stalled lab redevelopment, 7th Spoke.
The creation of the public patio Almquist spoke of – a conversion of an old slip lane between Elm Street and Highland Avenue in front of Mike’s Food and Spirits – is part of it. Mayor Jake Wilson called it a “tactical urbanism approach” to bring more foot traffic into the square. “The goal is to fill the square with great stuff, right? Give people a good experience in Davis, and leave them wanting to come back,” he said.
It’s a struggle. The Rosebud Diner shut down abruptly in May, and Kong Pocha, the Korean corndog joint that added a street food restaurant concept in 2024, similarly closed its doors in June with no announcement – two more empty storefronts for the square. Chris Vining alerted the city June 23 in an email that he’d arrived in the morning at his Elm Street cannabis shop, The Goods, and “for the third time this year, I dealt with human feces around my business.”
Vining, who’s worked to turn the square around through activations in Statue Park and the plaza, said more help is needed from the city. “Litter, private curbside bins left out during business hours and overflowing city trash receptacles compound this situation, all of which depress the Davis Square experience,” he wrote.
And the unhoused keep coming.
Perspective from the street
Wilson has made it a priority to help the unhoused population across the city during his first six months as mayor. He said the city is “nearing go time” on a hub model used by Chelsea police in which unhoused people can meet directly with community organizations and caseworkers to handle health issues.
“It can be a matter of connecting one person with the services they need that can have a really positive impact in their life and on the square,” Wilson said.
Things can look differently from the street. Michael Anthony, who was sitting in Statue Park on Monday talking with a friend, said it seems from his long experience with Davis Square – he said he grew up around five blocks away up College Avenue but now is unhoused – that arrests have picked up from years past. “The police are on their job. You know, the detectives walking by, plainclothes officers, MBTA officers,” Anthony said, “I see, probably six days out of the week, somebody getting arrested. This past year it’s just been arrest after arrest, two or three a day.”
The arrests might be about fighting, sleeping in public or panhandling. “I can only tell you what I’ve witnessed,” Anthony said.
It’s not just that the police are making more arrests; he also thinks there’s been more crime. Though the Somerville Homeless Coalition has done wonderful work finding shelter over the past three years for many of the homeless, they merely get replaced with newcomers from Central Square, Porter Square or Alewife in Cambridge, he said. “They can spend millions and billions of dollars on bunker buster bombs, and they can’t feed a hungry kid at night,” Anthony said of the government.
Police data confirm an increase
Somerville police generally confirm what Anthony has observed. A warm-weather plan for Davis Square began implementation May 1 – the same day as Down in Davis – bringing more patrols and needle sweeps and enforcing park hours “so the area remains welcoming for all community members,” the department said
In police data shared with The Independent covering actions in and immediately around Davis Square from the start of 2026 through Monday, officers did 922 walk-and-talks this year as opposed to 465 in the same period last year, essentially doubling officer visits. Business contacts rose 43 percent, to 332 from 233. Directed patrols were up 95 percent: Police came to the square on calls 1,696 times this year compared with 868 times last year.
The number of all “proactive activities” tracked by police, including citizen and youth contacts, is 3,332 so far this year, compared with 1,944 last year, or up 71 percent, according to the police data shared by a spokesperson for the city.
The number of arrests is less than Anthony perceived, though. In the 193 days for which police provided data, they made 42 arrests in the Davis Square area compared with 20 in the year before – more than doubling the rate from 2025, but not becoming a daily occurrence.
Helping hands
The Somerville Homeless Coalition, which is partnering with the city on the hub system, is trying to do its part with a new shelter. It opened a 26-bed emergency shelter on the first floor of First Church Somerville on College Ave on May 19. Opening the doors took years longer than anticipated.
Three years ago, the coalition planned to move its shelter from the basement of the Holy Bible Baptist Church just down College Avenue, where it had operated for more than 40 years. The 16-bed shelter was accessible only by a steep staircase, which Libby said made it difficult or impossible for older guests or people with disabilities to enter. “We were having to turn away a lot of people that really needed the help,” Libby said.
The coalition approached First Church Somerville about moving the shelter there. Brett Smith, First Church Somerville’s treasurer, said that around the same time, the church developed a mission statement that “talked about our desire to provide radically inclusive sanctuary.” After much deliberation, the church and the parishioners decided that hosting the shelter was consistent with the mission.
The two organizations planned to move the shelter in 2024. But two families who lived nearby on Francesca Avenue sued to overturn the Zoning Board of Appeals’ approval to install the shelter, citing the potential for safety issues, increased noise from emergency vehicles and declining property values. After lengthy litigation, a judge upheld the approval in April.
Libby said that people stay at the shelter for six to nine months on average, but that depends on how long it takes them to get a job or find permanent housing.
No magic fix
Smith, who lives on Francesca Avenue near the shelter, said that there haven’t been major disruptions caused by the shelter since it opened.
Smith knows this shelter will not solve homelessness in Davis Square, let alone Somerville. The shelter is open only 16 hours a day, so people need to find a place to be during the day. Ultimately, the only way to help an unhoused person is to give them a place to live.
“I am not expecting the shelter to magically fix everything. I do think it’s important to be clear-eyed about that. But at the same time, it never crossed my mind that that should be a reason not to do anything. This project has improved people’s lives and it will continue to improve people’s lives,” Smith said.
The shelter has already made an impact in the square over the past month, said Dana Westover, a Teele Square resident who mixes audio during the Down in Davis concerts.
“The population has dipped. They don’t seem to be at their wits end. Of course, it changes day by day,” Westover said of the unhoused.
Marc Levy contributed reporting to this post, which was updated July 15, 2026, with Davis Square arrest data.
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