02.03.2025

State of chaos in Mass. education system | New game plan needed for struggling downtown Boston | Kraft takes aim at Boston’s housing woes under Wu |

Hut, hut, hike: As he launches his bid for mayor, Josh Kraft places Boston’s anemic housing production, high prices and rents at the center of his campaign

The long-time nonprofit executive and son of the Patriots billionaire owner may be a political newcomer.

And Josh Kraft may face an uphill battle to unseat Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who remains a formidable opponent, despite discontent over rising taxes, stalled development projects, and humiliating State House defeats for her progressive agenda.

But he’s sure picked a great issue to run on.

Kraft, who led the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston for several years, is slated to officially announce his candidacy at an event Tuesday morning in Dorchester’s Prince Hall.

And in a video announcing his candidacy, Kraft is putting housing - and the slump in production of new homes, apartments and condos under Wu - at the center of his campaign.

“I care that middle class families are squeezed by the cost of housing,” Kraft said. “My number one priority is to lower the cost of housing by building more housing,” adding that Boston “ranks near the bottom” of all cities in the country in housing starts.

As Contrarian Boston has reported, construction of new housing, after soaring under the Walsh and Menino administrations, has hit its lowest levels in years under Wu, all but grinding to a halt over the last four months of 2024.

Rising interest rates have clearly played a role, wreaking havoc with financing for new projects.

Yet the decline has also come as the Wu administration has proposed development- killing ideas like rent control, while also piling regulatory requirement upon regulatory requirement on developers struggling to get projects off the ground in a tough financing environment.

Kraft is clearly attempting to cast himself as a more centrist, pragmatic leader in the mold of former Mayor Marty Walsh, with whom he spoke regularly during his time in office.

Amid the shift to remote work, Wu has angered business leaders with an ongoing effort to hike tax rates on half-empty office buildings and other commercial properties.

On the other end of the political spectrum, Wu has also been faced with rising anger among some neighborhood leaders over high-handed treatment by administration officials and claims of broken promises.

“I care that City Hall puts ideology and politics ahead of impact,” Kraft says in his announcement video.

File under: Solid start.

Can it be saved? Nearly five years into the remote work era, downtown Boston faces big challenges amid empty office space and lagging street traffic, with no easy fix in sight, experts say

We are not likely to see a return of the Big Bad 70s, when nothing got built in downtown Boston, the Combat Zone was in its lurid prime, and arsonists torched hundreds of buildings across the city.

But the shift to remote work has not been kind to downtown Boston, with the region’s economic hub stuck in a deep rut and in need of some bold new ideas to shake things up.

That was the verdict of a panel of experts who took part in Contrarian Boston’s online forum last Thursday on the future of downtown.

Nearly five years after the pandemic-fueled shift to remote work, the decline in foot traffic from the loss of all those workers who have gone remote remains a huge issue for local restaurants, shops and other businesses.

“We need more foot traffic downtown, one way or another,” said Justin Sorbo, a partner at Pearl St. Fitness and one of the panelists. “Tuesday through Thursday is a decent situation, but other than that, it’s pretty flat.”

Justin Sorbo, partner at Pearl St. Fitness in downtown Boston

Larry DiCara, former president of the Boston City Council and one of the city’s top real estate lawyers, noted that on “Fridays, it’s dead,” while Mondays are typically “slow.”