Diti Kohli, “Boston thrives off the dreams of young people. But can they make it here?,” Boston Globe, April 25, 2023.
“It’s not a coincidence. Part of the exodus can be attributed to the pandemic and the usual ebb and flow of students and footloose young people from the city. But many agreed that the soaring cost of living here is a major factor….Baby boomers and Gen Xers benefited from economic conditions that do not exist for millennials. And by many measures, the path ahead for Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, is even more fraught.”
“Tide is turning, rightly, to considering voting rights behind bars” (Letters), Boston Globe, April 24, 2023.
“Allowing incarcerated people to civically engage contributes to rehabilitation, which benefits everyone in Massachusetts. The idea of denying civic engagement for the sake of punishment belongs in the ash heap of history.”
Andrew Brinker, “Rent control battle looms but it’s never been easy to pass tenant protections on Beacon Hill,” Boston Globe, April 23, 2023.
“And yet as Boston’s supercharged housing market transforms lower-income corners of the city, there are few formal mechanisms in place to keep vulnerable renters in their homes. Policies that have long been on the books in other high-cost cities, such as prohibiting so-called “no cause” evictions or allowing tenants the opportunity to buy their building when it goes up for sale, have gone nowhere in Boston, often because such measures also need approval from the state Legislature. “
Bill McKibben, “A Massachusetts Town Leads a Way Out of the Housing Crisis,” New Yorker, April 19, 2023.
“My family lives in multifamily housing; without it, we wouldn’t be able to live here in Lexington,” he said. “When my family dealt with financial hardship and eventual homelessness, we were told by many people in this town that we didn’t belong in Lexington and we should move somewhere else. How do you think it makes me feel when some people from a point of great privilege say that they don’t want the type of multifamily housing that I live in because it looks ugly?”
Emma Platoff and Matt Stout, “Massachusetts Legislature, hostile to rent control, includes more landlords than renters,” Boston Globe, April 21, 2023.
“Figures compiled by the Globe suggest that dozens of legislators may have a conflict on major housing policy proposals as they weigh their own financial interests alongside the needs of their constituents. A top-down government body that often moves at a plodding pace even on pressing issues, the Legislature has sometimes been a place where major housing policy proposals go to die.”
Nina Lev, “Needs of the many outweigh the desires of a few” (Letter), Boston Globe, April 19, 2023.
“Don’t these citizens already live in comfortable homes, send their children to good schools, and enjoy nice vacations? Wouldn’t their lives, like those of the rest of us, be enhanced by providing secure housing and great educational opportunities to all of the Commonwealth’s children? Like the rest of us, don’t they wantreliable transportation, environmentally sustainable infrastructure, public art, and glorious parks? Until we can fully fund all these priorities, shouldn’t we hold off on talking about refunds to the most fortunate?”
John Hilliard, “In the MBTA’s proposed $9.2 billion spending plan, transit advocates argue more funds are needed for expansion,” Boston Globe, April 12, 2023.
“Stacy Thompson, the executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, said the T must balance both near-term safety and maintenance, while also working on expansion….“Things like expansion and resiliency are not extras, or nice to have. They should be considered core to the viability of the system,”Thompson said.”
Peter Coy, “The 100-Year-Old Reason U.S. Housing Is So Expensive,” New York Times, April 14, 2023.
“Once a neighborhood is zoned for single-family detached homes, it almost always stays that way, even when a city’s growth makes such low density inefficient. Los Angeles permits the building of only detached houses on 75 percent of its residentially zoned land; Chicago, 79 percent. First, those detached houses are built to last. Second, “the politics of local zoning almost invariably works to freeze land uses, especially in a neighborhood of detached houses,” he writes. “This is a significant finding, not yet part of urban lore. I chose the title of the book to emphasize it.””
“MCAS is the problem, not the solution” (Letters), Boston Globe, April 11, 2023.
“If over 700 students in a single year were denied a diploma because of MCAS, that probably means many thousands have been deprived of diplomas since MCAS became a graduation requirement in 2003….DESE should publish the total number of students denied diplomas because of MCAS for each year since MCAS became a graduation requirement.”
Joan Vennochi, “When it comes to issues facing the state, it’s Maura ‘in the middle’ Healey,” Boston Globe, April 10, 2023.
“To progressive Democrats, the answer is not enough. Pointing out that Healey’s tax reform proposal is basically the same as Baker’s, Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, said, “Her instinct has been to give that money back, weakening our state’s ability to deliver on the promise of investment.” On housing and transit, he added, “I think we need to see more from her administration about what their major goals are and how they would track their own success. There isn’t enough communicated urgency about what is needed for the affordability crisis and the crisis of the MBTA.” Cohn also flagged Healey for a “wait-and-see” attitude on zoning changes that are aimed at increasing affordable housing.”
