HOVERING BY THE FAIRY TALE playground, by the pumpkin carriage and turreted castles, behind the swings, was a wall of murky glass, an abandoned factory. There were no other factories around my childhood park in Newtonville, just a pleasing selection of unique houses, arranged along sidewalks that led to a village center with a candy […]
Housing
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Rivera pushes ‘zombie property’ legislation
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE EVERY CITY IN MASSACHUSETTS has one or two, and in Lawrence, there are hundreds, Mayor Daniel Rivera said Thursday: vacant properties that aren’t being developed, because their owners are tied up in land court or the ownership is otherwise unclear. “They’re either zombie properties or in bureaucratic no-man’s land, where people […]
Posted inUncategorized
Making housing a Beacon Hill priority
IT’S THE QUINTESSENTIAL housing story for many Boston area residents in their twenties and thirties. An apartment with three bedrooms, each commanding $1,100-plus, one bathroom, questionable maintenance, lead paint, and a broken dryer somewhere down in the basement. The landlord is absentee, or aloof at best, flagrantly violating tenant rights and jacking up your rent […]
Posted inThe Download
Making housing a Beacon Hill priority
It’s the quintessential housing story for many Boston area residents in their twenties and thirties. An apartment with three bedrooms, each commanding $1,100-plus, one bathroom, questionable maintenance, lead paint, and a broken dryer somewhere down in the basement. The landlord is absentee, or aloof at best, flagrantly violating tenant rights and jacking up your rent […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Walsh flooding the Mass. and Cass zone
BOSTON MAYOR MARTY WALSH intends to flood the area around Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue with outreach workers, public works staff, and police officers in a bid to ease the impact of homelessness, drug abuse, and crime in a hard-hit neighborhood in the South End. The strategy, dubbed “Melnea Cass/Mass Ave 2.0,” aims to […]
Posted inUncategorized
All politics is local
Though he made his biggest mark in Washington as speaker of the House, famous son of Cambridge Tip O’Neill’s most quoted aphorism was his claim that “all politics is local.” It’s fitting, then, that a fascinating new story in Mother Jones on Bernie Sanders’s views on housing and his political impact opens with a tale […]
Posted inEconomy
Following Lynch scandal, zoning review may not be enough
BOSTON MAYOR Marty Walsh is launching a review of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeal after a Boston Planning and Development Agency official agreed to plead guilty to accepting a bribe. John Lynch, former assistant director of real estate at the Economic Development Corporation, which sits within the planning and development agency, accepted $50,000 in […]
Posted inUncategorized
‘Methadone Mile’ problems mounting on Boston Common
TODAY’S Globe profiles William “Buddy” Christopher, the longtime Boston City Hall insider tapped by Mayor Marty Walsh to coordinate the city’s response to the problems centered around the area known as Methadone Mile, where the South End and Roxbury converge. Maybe Boston Common should be added to Christopher’s portfolio. The city’s signature park, and its front […]
Posted inThe Download
‘Methadone Mile’ problems mounting on Boston Common
Today’s Globe profiles William “Buddy” Christopher, the longtime Boston City Hall insider tapped by Mayor Marty Walsh to coordinate the city’s response to the problems centered around the area known as Methadone Mile, where the South End and Roxbury converge. Maybe Boston Common should be added to Christopher’s portfolio. The city’s signature park, and its […]
Posted inUncategorized
Breaking down “Operation Clean Sweep”
How do you balance public safety and neighborhood quality of life concerns with support for the most marginalized people in a community? Those issues exploded into public view with the recent arrests of homeless people and drug users as part of “Operation Clean Sweep,” a set of Boston police actions centered on the streets near […]