Student athletes, troubling trends | Those NIMBY rich countries | Definitely no model for Boston | New mayor, familiar pledge | Startup Marblehead newspaper attracts heavy hitters | Quick hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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Wu’s California dreaming: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu looks to San Francisco and Los Angeles for rent control inspiration
When we heard a top Wu administration official cite two California cities as exemplars of rent control done right, at first we thought we were hearing things.
But it turns out that is exactly what Sheila Dillon, Boston’s housing chief, told Contrarian Boston during an interview a few weeks ago. She cited San Francisco and LA, along with D.C., Chicago and Miami, as places that have both rent control and "a lot of development and a lot of economic strength.”
While we didn’t write anything on it at the time, it has gnawed at us, especially as the Wu administration prepares to file a rent control plan with the Boston City Council,
So let’s just just lay it all on the table: Why in the world would Boston - or any other city - look to San Francisco or Los Angeles, with their huge, homeless populations, for inspiration on housing?
Both California cities exempt new apartment construction from rent caps, and yet both have struggled to develop anywhere near enough housing to meet demand.
That should immediately ring alarm bells about the Wu administration’s assurances that a 15-year exemption on new construction will be just dandy with developers of new rental towers and buildings in Boston.
San Francisco has 115,000 more residents than Boston, but, on average, has been producing only half as much housing. It’s gotten so bad the state of California has given San Francisco a mandate to build more than 82,000 new homes over the next decade.
In Los Angeles, where there are 40,000 homeless people, the City of Angels is also in desperate need of new housing, with builders currently putting up less than a third of the 57,000 new apartments and condos needed each year.
You can’t blame California’s housing woes on rent control, but it certainly hasn’t helped.
Once rent control is in place, there is noting to stop city officials and activists from ratcheting down the rent cap or removing the exemption for new construction, and developers know this.
Want to stick it to the real estate speculators, who snap up run-down rental properties in pricey markets and then jack up the rents?
Then build a lot more housing and put them out of business.
Terrible trend: Dozens of discriminatory incidents reported at Mass. school sports programs
How many? There have been 41 reports over roughly the past year of everything from spectators shouting racial slurs at high school games to offensive posts on social media.
That’s up from the 35 incidents reported back in December, or about one per week this winter, according to Michael Rubin, a top official at the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association and Massachusetts School Administrators Association.
The targets? “People of color, Jews, those with disabilities and … those identifying as gay/lesbian/transgender in athletics,” according to letter sent to parents by Anna Nolin, superintendent of schools in Natick, where one of the most recent incidents took place.
Allegations in late December of racist and anti-Semitic material posted online led school officials to call in the police and the district attorney’s office and suspend one of Natick High School’s winter sports teams.
An investigation found that no hate crime, nor any hazing had occurred, unlike the explosive case in Danvers, in which members of that town’s high school hockey team were alleged to have engaged brutal and racist hazing rituals.
However, there was an “acknowledged and collective acceptance of toxic speech related to religion, race, culture, ethnicity, and sexual preference,” Nolin, the Natick superintendent, wrote in an email to parents.
Right now, some of the main offenders are not the athletes themselves, but rather spectators at games, both students and adults, hurling racial epithets and the like at visiting teams, according to the MIAA’s Rubin.
“When these situations occur, you have to address it immediately,” said Rubin, who was a long-time coach and principal in East Boston.
The ever-increasing cost of construction: Blame … affluence?
Anyone concerned about the rise in construction costs, whether it’s for public- or private-sector projects, should definitely check out this excellent piece by the NYT’s Ezra Klein on the dramatic fall in construction-industry productivity over the past 50 years.
The bottom line: We’re getting a lot less for a lot more these days when it comes to construction projects.
So what’s causing the fall in productivity that’s partly led to ever-higher prices for construction projects, big and small?
A new paper by two prominent Chicago-based economists doesn’t provide clear answers. But the paper does note that falling construction productivity and rising construction costs seem to be afflicting most other affluent/industrialized countries around the world, not just the United States.
What’s cool about the NYT article is that Klein decides to find answers on his own about falling construction productivity – and what he finds is pretty damn convincing.
It has to do with how affluent countries tend to impose more safety, environmental, zoning and other regulations on construction projects compared to less-affluent nations, which are determined to build (or re-build) their under-developed economies.
Boston wants to cut red tape in development project approvals. Now where have we hard that before?
Maybe the third time will actually be the charm when it comes to streamlining Boston’s cumbersome process for reviewing new development projects.
But given the history here, we are definitely not banking on it.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu made no mention of her predecessors’ efforts in this area when she announced plans, during her recent State of the City address, to “simplify and accelerate timelines so that good projects get shovels in the ground faster.”
To that end, Wu on Friday appointed a panel of developers, planners, labor leaders and community activists to look at ways to “reform” the process, according to a press release.
By our count, this is the third time in the last three decades that Boston officials have tried to “streamline” City Hall’s approval process, which can leave some projects in limbo for years.
The late great Thomas M. Menino, Boston’s longest serving mayor, enacted a series of so-call reforms back in the late 1990s, while former mayor-turned-federal-labor-chief Marty Walsh launched his own review at the start his first term, I noted recently in my weekly Banker & Tradesman column.
Will Wu succeed where others have failed?
Stay tuned.
Reviving local news: Startup Marblehead Current features an A-Team of journalists
By Mark Pickering
“Marblehead is a great place to run a newspaper. The community cares a lot about local news,” said Kris Olson, consulting editor for the startup Marblehead Current.
Launching the startup publication has been “a labor of love all around,” added Olson, who had edited the Marblehead Reporter for 14 years. The Current was launched online in June and in November put out its first print edition, which goes out free to all the town’s businesses and households.
Early last year, the Marblehead Reporter’s corporate owner, Gannett, eliminated local coverage and turned even the Marblehead website into a collection of regional news.
The paper’s last editorial side staffer became a regional food writer for Gannett.
Not long afterwards, a group of former Marblehead Reporter staffers and journalism veterans began meeting over Chinese food at the Fen Yang House to brainstorm on what could be done to return local news coverage to the seaside town of over 20,000.
And they saw an opportunity. As with the Concord Bridge startup, the Current launched as a a nonprofit soliciting for advertising and donations and looking for grants.
In an interview with Contrarian Boston, Olson said that the Current is pulling in more than $4,000 each week in print ads. That could mean $208,000 in 2023. At the same time, the nonprofit paper has landed about $20,000 in donations and $100,000 from local nonprofits.
Amazingly, given the money-making challenges of local news operations, others have seen an opportunity in Marblehead as well. The Current is now in a newspaper war.
The owners of The Daily Item in Lynn began printing the for-profit Marblehead Weekly News in August. Similarly to the Current, the Weekly News is distributed free to Marblehead businesses and households.
Yet another startup, the online-only Marblehead Beacon, also launched last June. Its website says the outlet “seeks to fill the gap left by” the loss of Gannett’s local news coverage. The startup has “a modest budget funded only by” its three founding staffers – who have roots in the Marblehead community but are new to the news business.
For its part, the Current’s team, at least at the start, was weighted toward the editorial side of operations. Veterans of Gannett’s Marblehead Reporter newspaper were onboard from the start: Will Dowd, now the Current’s managing editor, and Leigh Blander, as a reporter.
Also there in the planning stages were Ed Bell, a retired Associated Press Boston bureau chief, and Jessica Barnett, who teaches at Salem State University’s communications school. Both are now on the Current’s board.
In turn, Bell recruited Virginia Buckingham, a former op-ed columnist and deputy editorial page editor at the Boston Herald, for the Marblehead Current’s board. In contrast to her hard-hitting newspaper self, Buckingham now pens a more feature-style column weekly.
Former Heraldite Virginia Buckingham has found a new home at the Marblehead Current
Buckingham said working on the Current and its board has been “an opportunity to learn more about local news.” And she’s writing an “Everything Will Be OK” column, which allows her to connect with people in a more personal way than as a political writer.
Also on the board is sales and marketing veteran Donna Rice, who used to work in advertising sales at The Boston Globe.
Other current board members include: Marblehead business community stalwart Gene Arnould, owner of the Arnould Gallery and Framery; brand strategist Kate Haesche Thomson; fundraising pro Francie King; and digital publisher James Bryant.
Nonprofit newspapers are part of “an uplifting trend on the media scene … filling the void left by media giants, added Buckingham.
Hot commodity: In demand where there were once spurned, vocational high schools need more seats for students, not lawsuits
By David Mancuso
Parents and their lawyers are calling for fair access to some of the state’s better performing public schools. This time the focus is on vocational schools. Like the fight against charter schools in the past, the argument is once again about “cherry picking” top performing students over students of color, or lower incomes.
Lawyers for Civil Rights and the Center of Law and Education filed a lawsuit last week arguing the state allows vocational schools to use “exclusionary criteria,” such as attendance, discipline records, English language skills, disabilities, and attendance to determine who gets access to the education vocational schools provide and who doesn’t.
In 2021, the state eliminated a requirement that vocational programs weigh applicants’ academic records. The suit suggests that most vocational schools still use the practice.
Mirian Albert, staff attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights told, The Boston Globe that students interested in a vocational career should be given a “fair shot,” at being able to attend a vocational school.
“All students are different and they have different skills and abilities,” Albert told the paper. “Public school education should celebrate those differences and uplift these students…”
Ok, do we really need a lawyer to argue that point in court?
There is clearly high demand for what vocational schools offer. Every business person knows that combining demand with scarcity either drives up the price of admission or leads to organizational failure. A lawsuit will not reduce the waitlist or the need for vocational education. Scarcity is seldom resolved in the courts and is best addressed by increasing supply - and, in this case, increasing the number of vocational schools.
“The model of applied learning works,” Heidi Riccio, superintendent of Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, told Contrarian Boston. “We should be looking at ways to expand vocational education across the Commonwealth as the need for this form of learning has proven to be a success.”
Our workforce and economy in the Commonwealth are depending on schools to do the work necessary to build the career pipeline. Vocational schools fill a critical need. Attacking rather than supporting them seems counter-productive for everyone.
Would it not be better for everyone for the state to increase the number of vocational school seats available, or is that solution too obvious?
Quick Hits:
Here’s a new book whose catchy title definitely caught our attention: “Dirtbag, Massachusetts” New York Times
Um, nice try, but this headline tries far too hard to impress: “Is Governor Sununu off piste enough to take on Trump?” Boston Globe
Here comes Balloongate: “Pentagon reports past Chinese surveillance balloons near Florida, Texas” Washington Post
And how many years did it take them to figure this one out? “Taking Aim at Trump, Koch Network Will Back G.O.P. Primary Candidates” New York Times
What is Contrarian Boston?
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.