02.12.2025

State watchdog turns up heat on secretive Legislature | Healey flipflop on controversial Allston train yard? | Mass gains penniless migrants and sheds upwardly mobile professionals | An inadvertent peek into the Globe editing process | Kraft issues plan to revive stalled housing production in Boston |

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Build baby build: Mayoral contender Josh Kraft releases plan to juice stalled housing production in Boston

The last time an incumbent lost a mayoral race in Boston was in the 1940s.

So Josh Kraft has his work cut out for him as he looks to unseat Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who is up for reelection this fall.

On Tuesday morning, Kraft issued a plan for tackling what is arguably Boston’s biggest challenge right now, the collapse in private sector housing production over the past few years and the upward pressure that’s putting on prices and rents.

And at least when it comes to his plans to revive new housing development, Kraft has exhibited far greater creativity and flexibility in the week he’s officially been in the race than Wu has in three years in office.

Kraft’s proposal calls for dropping the Wu administration’s 20 percent affordable requirement for new apartment and condo buildings, lowering it to 13 percent, where it was under the Walsh administration.

Josh Kraft

Developers argue that the new requirement, which effectively guarantees they will lose money on a fifth of all new units built, is a deal breaker in obtaining the financing needed to build new projects.

Kraft’s plan would also raise the income level of who is eligible to rent or buy these affordable units, capturing a larger share of middle-class Bostonians.

Kraft is pairing this with an opt-in rent control program: apartment building owners who agree to cap rent increases would get a 20 percent break on their real estate taxes.

So how would Kraft, son of the Patriots owner and a veteran nonprofit exec, pay for it all?

Apparently, with some of the millions in new tax revenue that jumpstarting stalled housing projects would create.

And as they say, that’s the plan, anyway.

Runaway transportation bureaucracy? MassDOT forging ahead with plans for a controversial train yard, endangering plans for new housing in Allston

Whoever is in charge of transportation policy in Massachusetts, please give us a call.