Ready for rent control lite? | Distorted rental stats | ‘Big save’ for Boston economy | | Saw it here first |
‘Big save’ for Boston: National volleyball tournament stays put after balking at vaxx mandate
As they struggle to keep their lights on, restaurants and hotels across the city just dodged a major bullet.
Thanks to a flurry of last-minute deal making, staff at the city’s main convention center headed off disaster when the NIKE Boston Volleyball Festival threatened to walk.
The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center won permission to exempt players in the upcoming tournament from the city’s proof-of-vaccination requirements, keeping the mega event from bolting the South Boston meeting hall.
It’s no minor concession: It is a hall pass, so to speak, for 10,000 high-school age players on nearly 1,000 teams.
That said, city hotels are breathing a sigh of relief following the agreement. The tournament, which will take place over two weekends in late February and early March, is slated to generate more than 26,000 hotel night bookings at local establishments.
Less than a third of Boston hotels are occupied on any given night, with occupancy at some of the hardest hit establishments down to a measly five to six beds out of every hundred.
“That was a big save,” said Paul Sacco, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. “That would have been a big loss.”
It was a close call. Shortly after Mayor Michelle Wu announced the vaccine mandate, the head of the NIKE volleyball tournament called with a stark message: “‘I need to cancel,’” recalled Diane DiAntonio, general manager of the BCEC. The tournament chief added that convention centers in Florida and other states did not operate under the same restrictions.
That triggered several hastily convened Zoom meetings between convention planners and officials at City Hall, leading to the decision to exempt players from the proof of vaccination requirement.
“It’s really what kept the event alive,” DiAntonio said.
Behind those stunning rent increase stories
A new Redfin survey places Boston at No. 5 for rent increases following a 22 percent-plus jump in 2021.
Interesting, but what really stands out is what Redfin calls Boston’s “average” monthly rent: $3,637.
There’s no disputing the fact that rents are indeed rising and have been much too high for far too long.
But Redfin’s survey, and, for that matter, many of its ilk, appears geared towards producing eye-popping numbers in a bid to grab headlines and eyeballs.
That’s because the Redfin survey combines apartments of all sizes, and, even more critically, focuses on average, rather than median, rents.
Why care? Well, averages are a particularly inaccurate way to measure rents, or, for that matter, anything in real estate. It’s why most real estate data organizations, like The Warren Group, also use median numbers when they calculate home prices.
With an average, you are mixing in $2,000 a month one-bedroom apartments with penthouses that rent for $10,000 a month, creating funhouse-like distortions.
But news organizations are suckers for this kind of thing, with the bigger the increases, the better the story. A case in point is the Washington Post, which ran this story Sunday on the Redfin survey near the top of its online edition.
The headline played up the fact that some cities are seeing increases of more than 30 percent, a big number that clearly got the editors’ attention. Interestingly, the initial headline ran with a 40 percent number, but for some reason, was later changed, possibly because it only applied to three cities, one of which is New York.
And while the WP story mentions these were average rents, there’s no explanation about how misleading average numbers can be.
Down to the wire with ‘rent control lite’
There is a flurry of last-minute lobbying from landlord and renter groups as the moment of truth nears at the State House for the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, dubbed ‘rent control lite.’
Championed by Sen Pat Jehlen, TOPA would give tenants first crack at buying their apartment buildings should the landlord decide to sell.
Groups representing rental building owners have been ramping up their efforts to defeat the bill, which they contend would tie up potential sales for months in red tape.
All eyes now are on the Joint Committee on Housing, on which the Somerville Democrat serves as vice chair. The committee, in turn, faces a Wednesday deadline to either move the bill forward or pass it off to a study panel.
But landlords face formidable opposition on the lobbying front. Community development corporations, who complain of being boxed out of an increasingly competitive market by fast-moving cash-laden investors, are pushing hard for TOPA.
Under the bill, nonprofit housing developers would be able to work with tenants and take over their purchase options. The legislative would also effectively give nonprofits months to line up financing and work out a deal.
Stay tuned.
You saw it here first
That would be this Herald story about Boston restaurants losing business to Somerville, Quincy and other neighboring communities in wake of the city’s vaxx mandate.
Some restaurants are bleeding $10,000 to $15,000 a week in revenue, according to a letter the Massachusetts Restaurant Association has sent to Boston’s new mayor.
Contrarian Boston ran this piece shortly after the city’s vaxx mandate went into effect.
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.
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Thanks for reading and see you Wednesday.