NAHANT — Lauren Barton could be forced out of her house any day now.
The home she has lived in since 2010 on Castle Road will soon be nothing but a plot of land. But, she has no idea when that day will come.
In October 2022, the Board of Selectmen authorized Town Administrator Antonio Barletta to begin the process of evicting Coast Guard housing tenants.
“[The town] served us with a 30-day notice to quit on September first and that meant ‘leave by October first’ and when we didn’t leave by October first we got a summons to court,” Barton said.
The property at Castle Road and Goddard Drive (known as Coast Guard housing) is owned by the town of Nahant after it was purchased from the federal government in 2004. The town has a loan of 1.8 million for this purchase due in 2024, Barletta told The Item in October. The solution the Board came up with to balance the loan was to sell the property.
The most recent update Barton has is that the tenants and the town had a mediation hearing on Dec. 29 with the town’s attorney Dan Skrip.
“But you can’t have a negotiation if there’s no offer so it was just kind of going through the motions,” Barton said. “When the mediator asked the town’s attorney what he wanted from me, he said ‘I want her to leave.’ And that was it. And he reminded me before we closed session that the bulldozers are coming soon.”
There is no set date for the next hearing, which will be before a judge, she said.
“A judge could say anything though, we could go to court and a judge could say get your belongings out in 30 days. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we see a judge,” Barton said.
Barton has a prospect for other housing but said it’s not set in stone yet. One of the main reasons some of the tenants haven’t moved is because of a lack of affordable housing options, she said.
“Ideally … the people who are still here would be relocated to comparable units, and at the very least compensated for their moving expenses,” Barton said.
When she asked the town if her moving expenses could be compensated they asked her to send them an itemized list of every cost she would need covered, she said.
“I still haven’t heard from them. I let them know that I potentially have an apartment and I didn’t really get a response right away, which is tough and I still don’t have a response. They want me to send them an itemized list of things that I might be looking for compensation for which feels further dehumanizing, actually,” Barton said.
Barton said she wanted to know why the town failed to involve residents in conversations regarding the future of the property.
“I would ask them if they considered us citizens here because they’ve made a lot of public statements about how bad they feel about this but I haven’t heard anything personally and that’s hard,” Barton said. “I would ask them why didn’t you talk to me in all these years or get our opinion or … try to figure something out that wouldn’t be so hostile and negative for the whole community?”
Board of Selectmen Chair Gene Canty and Vice Chair Mark Cullinan declined to comment. Barletta wrote in a statement to The Item that “No date has been set for the next court event.” He declined to comment on the settlement negotiations.
This entire process has been very stressful, Barton said.
“I can’t describe what it feels like to be under legal pressure to do something that you literally can’t do,” Barton said. “There’s nowhere for me to go. There’s nowhere for my neighbors to go.”
Barton said she still had hope she and other residents of Coast Guard Housing wouldn’t be evicted.
“There is hope. There’s always hope,” she said.
