01.05.2023

Mainstream media gives oxygen to human extinction cranks | Time’s up for troubled T subway car builder | More bad Boston housing numbers | Battle for control of MassGOP heats up | About Contrarian Boston |

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More red flags: Approvals of new housing units in Boston are down even more than first reported

It’s too early to give the last rites to Boston’s housing construction boom.

But the years-long surge in new apartment and condo starts may finally be on its last legs, the latest stats out of City Hall show.

Just 2,647 condos and apartments were given a green light in 2022, the Boston Planning and Development Agency reported Thursday in a rare correction issued by the agency. That’s down from the previous figure of 3,247 new residential units, which the agency had reported on Dec. 30.

The new numbers represent a more than 60 percent drop over 2021, when the BPDA approved 6,643 units of new housing, and an even greater plunge from 2020’s 10,123 residential units.

Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, noted the “real estate market is going through an adjustment” amid a pullback in financing for new projects, higher interest rates, and higher material costs.

“Any decrease in the production of new homes in Boston is a major concern,” he said. “We have had a shortage of homes for years and shortage of homes at all income levels.”

Abundant Housing Massachusetts Executive Director Jesse Kanson-Benanav and Statewide Organizer Kassie Infante

It’s not the only sign of trouble, either.

Housing project approvals by City Hall’s development arm are a somewhat forward looking measure. It can often take developers months or even years to break ground after winning a green light from the BPDA, due to additional reviews and the need to firm up construction financing.

However, building permits, which are only pulled when a developer is ready to start construction, are down as well.

Boston officials issued just over 700 building permits for new housing units during the second half of 2022. That’s roughly a third of the number of permits granted during the same period in 2021, according to data compiled by federal housing officials.

And no building permits were issued at all in November and December of this year.

Environmentalism or just a hatred of humanity? Times and now Globe lavish attention on fringe activists looking forward to a planet without humans

The New York Times recently devoted more than 1,800 words to a story on Les Knight, the now geriatric founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

“Look what we did to this planet,” Knight told the Times, in a feature that was prominently displayed on its website. “We’re not a good species.

Knight has devoted his life to trying to convince the rest of us to stop having children - he apparently got a vasectomy at 25.

They’re not joking: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement even has their own logo

Now the Globe is jumping on the bandwagon, running a big piece in its Ideas section entitled “Pondering a world without humans.”

To be fair, the story features an interview with an author, Adam Kirsch, whose book, “The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us,” outlines a debate on the intellectual fringes between those see human extinction as an ultimate good, and others who believe humans will evolve into a new species by merging with technology.

A writer and a poet, Kirsch makes clear he is not in the camp rooting for humans to go extinct.

That said, why give such valuable journalistic space and attention to ideas that are not just out on the fringe, but truly have some dark implications?

The extreme right has its whacky cult beliefs and obsessions, with QAnon and the anti-vax movement front and center.

But let’s be honest here: Imagining a planet without humans is an obsession of the outer fringes of the progressive left, and a disturbing one.

To most people with little time on their hands for intellectual navel gazing, rooting for the mass extinction of humanity is simply bizarre.

However, we suspect the Globe and the Times are pandering to a small but avid segment of their readership with pieces like this.

Troubled Chinese rail car manufacturer at center of latest Orange Line woes

Beijing-based CRRC Corp. won a contract in 2014 to build a fleet of subway cars for the MBTA at a new plant in Springfield.

The company, which had never built anything in the the United States, won thanks to to a low-ball bid of $567 million - more than $150 million below the nearest competitor.

Nearly a decade later, the Chinese rail giant has managed to deliver only a few dozen subway cars, many of them with serious defects.

In the latest mess tied to CRRC, the T has been forced to pull from service at least nine newly built Orange Line subway cars after a power cable issue that triggered electrical arcing.

So why in the world is the MBTA still doing business with CRRC? As we noted here back in October, CRRC has been running into problems delivering on similar rail contracts in countries around the world.

That is a question that Maura Healey, about to be sworn in Thursday as governor, will have to grapple with, with Charlie Baker having effectively punted on the issue.

But in a first step, Healey should consider bringing in another major rail contractor to effectively ride herd on CRRC and see if it can get things back on track, Jim Aloisi, a former state transportation secretary, told Contrarian Boston.

“I don’t know why anyone at this point would or should have confidence” that CRRC “knows what it’s doing,” Aloisi said. “I am confounded by it.”

End days for Jim Jones Lyons? Rival in election for MassGOP chair gains momentum

Amy Carnevale, a Republican state party committeewoman from Marblehead, is looking to oust Lyons as head of the state party.

And Carnevale has just picked up a key supporter - former Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson.

A Trumpian lightning rod who offered to send inmates to the southern border to help build the ex-president’s farcical wall, Hodgson is a popular figure among the MassGOP’s now dominant hard-right faction.

In fact, Hodgson, as reported here, had considered running himself for state party chair.

“I’m excited to have @SheriffHodgson on my team,” Carnevale tweeted on Wednesday. “Political parties are about team building and nobody communicates better with the grassroots than the Sheriff.”

Moderates in the Charlie Baker wing of the MassGOP probably hoped at one point to elect one of their own as party chair, but the focus now appears to have shifted to doing what it takes to oust Lyons, even if it means another Trump supporter taking the party’s helm.

Jim Jones back in the day

For his part, Lyons has come under fire for allegedly destroying the party’s finances, running roughshod over its internal rules, and overseeing an election debacle this fall that saw Democrats sweep all statewide offices.

Hence Lyons nickname, bequeathed by Howie Carr, of Jim Jones Lyons, in reference to the infamous Jim Jones, who led hundreds of followers to their death in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.

For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.

An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.

Our focus is:

·      Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;

·      Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;

·      The media and why it does what it does;

·      Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;

·      And whatever else catches our fancy.