| Home prices outpace rents | No moderate savior? | The Globe’s study scoops | Biden confounds pundits | Mass. gamblers prefer slots | About Contrarian Boston |
State House book club: Advocates try unusual lobbying technique to get lawmakers’ attention
Beacon Hill went full Scrooge on affordable housing last December, slashing hundreds of millions off spending requests.
Now, with rents and home prices at all-time highs, housing advocates are trying a novel approach to get the Legislature’s attention: giving away books
Nonprofit housing groups gave away copies of “The Color of Law,” which probes the role of the banking industry in the racial wealth gap, to every member of the Massachusetts Legislature in advance of a recent Zoom conference.
The hope is state lawmakers will take the book to heart as Gov. Charlie Baker did years ago, when he was presented with a copy.
The state’s Republican governor went on to become one of the biggest champions in the corner office of affordable housing in years. In fact, Baker last year proposed spending $1 billion of the $4 billion in federal relief money sent to Massachusetts on affordable housing, only to have that number knocked down to $600 million by legislative leaders.
“There was the idea that it worked with the governor, so let’s make sure legislators get a copy,” said Tom Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council. “That book has had such an impact on so many people.”
Globe goes all in on climate coverage
Yep, they’ve created a five-member team, including two new hires to cover the issue.
Stories have been appearing under the banner “Into the Red: Climate and the fight of our lives” and will have an “intensively local” approach, according to a piece the Globe ran when it launched the initiative.
Here’s hoping we won’t be treated to a steady stream of what a long-time colleague and friend calls “study scoops,” a Globe favorite that involves getting some academic or researcher to share their report before releasing it generally.
At first glance, this piece on a U.N. climate study, which ran on the Globe’s front-page Monday under the Into the Red banner, seemed to be a prime example of this genre, except it wasn’t even a scoop, having been released to everyone.
At a time when reporters are a scarce commodity, the Globe’s decision to create a separate, climate change team seems like a lost opportunity to further beef up the paper’s coverage of Boston’s struggling school system and other pressing local issues.
Reporters on just about every beat should be capable of producing stories on how climate change is impacting the issues they cover. You don’t need a special team to do it. That is unless you are looking to cater to a particular niche demographic.
Boston area home prices outpace rents – by a lot
That’s one of the findings in a recent report by the Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Local rents accelerated at a steady pace in the three to four percent range until the pandemic hit, which triggered a drop followed by a 6 percent rebound through the first eight months of 2021.
But here’s the thing: Boston area home prices didn’t fall at all, they accelerated during the pandemic, surging more than 16 percent during the same time period, as this chart shows.
One factor may be the number of new apartments coming online, with more than 10,200 new condos and apartments built in Massachusetts last year, most of them in the Boston area.
While still not enough to meet demand, compare that to the anemic single-family home market, with just a few thousand new homes put up each year in Greater Boston. And the few that are built are in the $1 million and up range, often on lots where older, less expensive homes were torn down to make way for the new construction.
Gubernatorial candidate backed by MassGOP moderates off to slow start
There were clearly hopes among the embattled Baker wing of the state GOP that Wrentham businessman Chris Doughty would provide a more electable alternative in the governor’s race.
But Doughty is off to a worryingly slow start.
Promised announcements of endorsements by state lawmakers have yet to come through, even as rival Geoff Diehl, a hardcore Trumpie, has doubled down, making a splash with his hiring of Corey Lewandowski to mastermind his campaign.
Other than running some radio ads, Doughty’s biggest move to date has been to announce a running mate. Kate Campanale, a little-known former state rep from Leicester, will run for lieutenant governor on a ticket alongside Doughty.
CommonWealth Magazine’s Michael Jonas sums things up rather nicely here.
“CAN A LARGELY unknown gubernatorial candidate, who is the underdog in a primary race in a cratering political party, get a little oomph by announcing that a largely unknown former state rep will be his unofficial running mate?” Jonas asks. “That sort of framing doesn’t suggest an auspicious impact.”
Ouch.
Overhyped? Bay State’s ‘resort casinos’ come up short
It’s hard not to wonder what in the world is going on when no-frills Plainridge Park has become the state’s most profitable gambling venue, at least in one key category.
Perched off I-95 on the Rhode Island border in sleepy Plainville, the racino, which has no hotel and just three restaurants, has nevertheless earned the distinction of having the most lucrative slots in the state.
Plainridge’s slot machines earned on average $374 per day in January. By contrast, Encore Boston Harbor, which cost $2.6 billion to build and boasts an array of restaurants, clubs, and other entertainment venues, saw its slot machines pull down just $332 per machine each day, while the nearly $1 billion Springfield MGM couldn’t even break the $300 a day mark, said Paul DeBole, assistant professor of political science at Lasell University in Newton and a gambling industry expert.
Just maybe our local gamblers aren’t particularly interested in the Las Vegas-style glitz that Encore embodies. Or it also could be the casino’s location in Everett is a pain to get to for everyone except those who live north of Boston.
“Those numbers tell me there appears to be in Massachusetts more of a convenience gambling market than a full-blown casino resort type of thing,” DeBole said.
Well, go figure.
After State of the Union speech panned by critics, Biden’s poll numbers surge
The president’s various verbal gaffes and stumbles had the usual suspects at Fox News chortling over Biden’s supposed ineptitude and senility, with Sean Hannity calling it “an unmitigated, predictable disaster.”
The MSM, as usual, was just as happy to pounce, a per this Joan Vennochi column in the Globe: “What will people remember about Biden’s speech? Minus the outbursts, not much.”
But, as has been typical during Biden’s now more than half century long political career, he’s getting the last laugh. Post speech, Biden is enjoying a pretty remarkable surge in his approval rating, which is now up to 47 percent, up from 39 percent last month, the Hill reports, citing the latest NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist National Poll.
Not being experts on international diplomacy, we don’t know enough to say whether Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis has been masterful, but common sense would dictate his performance has been at the very least right on the mark.
It’s also hard to argue with Biden’s fundamental decency and grit, both qualities that came through clearly in his big speech Tuesday night, at least with ordinary voters.
Quick hits:
How is this legal? “Worker who fought for union at Logan Airport restaurants is fired after union win” (Boston Globe)
Change happens, even at the Beacon Hill Pub: “Beloved Boston dive bar slated to become restaurant” (Boston Herald)
Cheap shot, if predictable: “Howie Carr: Somebody tell Biden the war is in Ukraine, not Iran” (Boston Herald)
It’s not hard - get vaccinated: “Mandates still costing some their jobs, from Massachusetts troopers to Boston College professor” (Boston Herald)
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.
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.