Here comes more boring, advocacy-style journalism | Stealing homes from the elderly for pennies on the dollar | Last stand for MassGOP chief Jim Jones Lyons? | Healey gets solid housing advice |
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Slow burn: No state decision likely on Wu’s rent control push until 2024
They’re downplaying it at Boston City Hall.
But Mayor Michelle Wu has clearly decided to slow the pace of her previously fast-track approach to bringing rent control back to Boston.
Wu had talked about having a rent control proposal ready to go at the start of 2023.
But now we won’t see a proposal for a couple months, with the mayor-appointed rent stabilization panel being brought back for additional meetings, Sheila Dillon, the city’s housing chief, told Contrarian Boston.
The City Council will then have to pass the plan. After that, forget about anything happening until the end of Legislature’s two-year session in July, 2024, a deadline that typically prompts a flurry of activity.
So why the slowdown? Top Wu administration officials are clearly concerned about the blowback they are already receiving from housing developers.
But there may also be some shrewd strategic calculations here as well.
Sheila Dillon, Boston’s housing chief
Let’s just say it wouldn’t be all the surprising if rent control advocates are eyeing the fall 2024 election season for a statewide referendum.
If the Legislature fails to pass a rent control bill, that would give supporters another chance to push something through in the fall at the ballot box, bolstered by the higher turnout a presidential election would generate.
“Most major cities have some form of rent stabilization,” Dillon said, citing New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles. “There is a lot of development and a lot of economic strength in those cities.”
Righting a terrible wrong: U.S. Supreme Court to review challenge of seizures of homes for overdue taxes
No one should lose their home over an overdue tax bill.
Yet homeowners in Massachusetts and other states, more than a few of them elderly or disabled, are being stripped of their most valuable assets by local officials after falling behind on their taxes, sometimes by just a few thousands dollars.
In one particularly heartrending case that CommonWealth Magazine’s Shira Schoenberg reported on last year, an elderly man in Oxford lost his $254,000 home over a $3,056 tax bill.
After foreclosing, local officials are too often selling homes to investors, who are making a killing after acquiring valuable real estate for just pennies on the dollar.
Now, in a move that could have big implications here in Massachusetts, the Supreme Court has agreed to review a case challenging government foreclosures on homes for overdue taxes.
The New England Legal Foundation has filed an amicus, friend-of-the-court brief in the Missouri case the high court has agreed to review, Tyler v. Hennepin County, Mo.
As it stands now, in Massachusetts and nine other states, local officials can seize homes for overdue taxes and then resell them, leaving the original owners out in the cold without a dime, the institute contends.
It’s sickening.
New initiative highlights Globe’s growing embrace of uber progressive, cause-driven journalism
They have their climate reporting team, their education inequity team, their Emancipator, and now it looks like they have a "Closing the Gap" reporting team and they're looking for a editor to run it.
The Globe, per this LinkedIn job posting, is seeking an editor-in-chief for its Closing the Gap team, which will “explore the racial wealth gap in Boston and beyond.”
The editor will have a “leadership role” in the Globe’s newsroom, and will be in charge of hiring a staff that will include a deputy editor and several reporters.
Who will be paying for the new “Closing the Gap” initiative is less clear, with the Globe citing a grant-making organization, but withholding its name.
The Globe’s old home on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. The paper has since moved to downtown Boston. (By Tony Fischer)
The Globe’s latest initiative follows in the footsteps of The Great Divide (covering the racial education gap and funded by the Barr Foundation) and Into the Red (covering climate change). The paper’s opinion section has also helped launch and host The Emancipator (in collaboration with BU’s Center for Antiracist Research).
The Globe insists it will maintain “complete editorial control over story selection, reporting, and editing,” and that may very well be.
But there’s another problem here, and it’s a big one: Advocacy journalism, at the end of the day, is boring journalism.
A prime example is the Globe’s climate team, whose mission seems to be to parrot the claims of environmental organizations.
For example, we doubt you will ever see a piece from the Globe’s climate team looking at whether the environmental movement erred in its implacable opposition to nuclear power, which we are all paying for now with much higher carbon emissions.
Maybe the Globe will prove us wrong.
But right now the ideological Balkanization of the Globe newsroom, if anything, appears to be intensifying.
Jim Jones Lyons had a catastrophic week. But amazingly, it may not be curtains yet for the embattled MassGOP chair.
First there was the revelation that Lyons blew tens of thousands of dollars to probe Gov. Maura Healey’s sex life and then stiffed the opposition research firm that did the work.
Now the state party’s treasurer contends Lyons may have violated state campaign finance laws while he was at it.
And, oh yeah, Lyons, a die-hard Trumpie and MAGA man, has all but bankrupted the state party while overseeing catastrophic election losses.
Yet even after all that, Lyons could very well pull out a win at the election for party chair slated for Jan. 31, for he retains the fervid support of the seething, whacked out, facts-be-damned Trump wing of the state party.
Not only is Lyons their jerk, but they clearly love him for it.
Embattled MassGOP boss Jim Lyons, back when he was a state rep. (By G16busch - Own work)
Lyons last week launched a statewide series of meetings to rally support among party activists for his reelection campaign.
In a clip posted on Twitter, Patrick Crowley, the aforementioned state party treasurer, asks Lyons, “What’s your budget?”
“Are you here to disrupt the meeting?” Lyons retorts. Crowley is then shouted down by Geoff Diehl, the party’s failed candidate for governor, and another state committee member.
A seat at the table: Advocate pushing for big increase in housing construction helped advise the Healey administration
By Mark Pickering
The housing crisis poses a formidable challenge for the new governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, and her administration.
“In the current market, we are hundreds of thousands of housing units short,” said Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of the up-and-coming Abundant Housing Massachusetts alliance.
It’s a perspective the Abundant Housing chief was able to share directly with the incoming Healey administration, having served on the governor’s 22-person transition team on housing, which has wrapped up its initial work. The group was led by Alisa Magnotta with the Housing Assistance Corp., Keith Fairey of Way Finders and Stephen Davis from the Davis Cos.
What Kanson-Benanav brought to the table is his extensive background in the pro-housing movement. This includes founding the group A Better Cambridge, which advocates for the creation of more, and more affordable, housing.
Because of the extremely limited supply of housing, he said, the wealthy are pricing working class and middle-income people out of the market for home buying.
“This includes seeing the wealthy make all-cash offers well above the asking price,” Kanson-Benanav said.
Even with rentals, he said, those with higher incomes are outbidding other apartment seekers, forcing lower-income people out of Boston.
In general, he added, “we have had a shortage of homes for years and a shortage of homes at all income levels.” Now the situation is worsening.
Kanson-Benanav said that – while the problems are daunting – a relatively new MBTA Communities zoning law offers some measure of hope.
The law is aimed at encouraging the construction of more housing near T and commuter rail stations – which, in turn, could cut down on regional traffic problems.
At the same time, Kanson-Benanav said, the state must do more to curb local zoning regulations and red tape—which have kept out low-income people and minorities. In addition, these practices have driven up the cost of building housing.
For its part, the stated goal of Abundant Housing Massachusetts and its member groups is to create and sustain communities that are racially and economically diverse. The alliance is backing state legislation that calls for “ending exclusionary zoning and building affordable homes.”
Among other things, proposed legislation could set a statewide goal of building 427,000 new housing units by 2040. Also up for debate: proposals that would require communities to allow more multifamily housing, make it easier for them to change restrictive zoning laws, and legalize accessory housing units statewide.
Addressing these issues is about equity, fairness and supporting the state’s families, Kanson-Benanav said. Beyond that, the housing crisis could choke off economic growth statewide.
“The lack of affordable and abundant housing will have a direct impact on our future economic viability.”
Mark Pickering is a veteran of the local news business, having worked on the business desk and the opinion pages of the Boston Herald.
About Contrarian Boston
I have fielded emails over the past year 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 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 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.