New decade, same old housing crisis, little progress | New twist in Long Island bridge mess | Runaway home prices | Chaos warning as state Republicans meet | Rooting for the orcas | About Contrarian Boston |
Chaos or coronation? MassGOP convention could prove tumultuous
Frankly, chaos is by far the best bet as Republicans from across the state gather in Springfield on Saturday.
The Trump faction of the state party is determined to ram through former state Rep. Geoff Diehl, who won the ex-president’s endorsement last fall, as the party’s nominee for governor at its state convention.
Still, there’s a major obstacle standing in the way between the one-time state lawmaker from Whitman and his coronation as the party’s gubernatorial nominee this weekend at the MassMutual Center: Chris Doughty.
The Wrentham businessman has garnered support from the Gov. Charlie Baker wing of the party and has won the endorsement of several Republican state lawmakers.
Doughty has also pumped well over half a million dollars of his own money into his campaign.
However, if Jim Lyons, the state party chair and also a die-hard Trumpie, runs the convention like he’s handled state party committee meetings, things could go south fast.
Lyons has earned a rep for running roughshod over party moderates, with a state committee meeting earlier this year devolving into a shouting match and threats (by Lyons) to call security.
“Chaos would be welcome compared to the **** show that we are expecting,” fumed one party insider and Doughty supporter.
An unsuccessful attempt a few weeks back to pack the convention with Trumpie Diehl supporters from Western Massachusetts has also left the Doughty camp on edge.
And there’s also a new rule, instituted by the Lyons-controlled state party committee, requiring delegates to register at the convention by 10 a.m., a move seen as a potential way to disqualify Doughty delegates, who are more likely to be driving in from Eastern Massachusetts.
Don’t be surprised if the convention ends with finger pointing and claims of foul play by both sides, with no clear outcome.
P.S. Defending Lyons, one long-time delegate reached out to Contrarian Boston to say this is the first time same-day registration has been allowed at the state convention. “Lyons is going overboard to allow as many people to participate when they’ve had over three months to register.”
What’s wrong with us? Decades of modest efforts to boost housing construction fail to move the needle on prices, rents in Massachusetts
Unbelievably, we are now nearing the quarter century mark since then Gov. Paul Cellucci launched what would the first of many efforts to tackle the state’s housing affordability mess.
Every governor since then has had his own pet housing program. Mitt Romney had 40R, Deval Patrick had Compact Communities, and now Gov. Charlie Baker, as he finishes his last year in office, is pushing his Housing Choice plan, as I note in his piece that just came out in CommonWealth Magazine.
While the plans vary in one way or another, all have failed miserably to put a dent in the cost of housing here in Massachusetts, which has become one of the priciest places to live on the planet.
The jury’s still out on Baker’s plan, which to the governor’s credit, goes well beyond what any of his predecessors have attempted, with hopes of spurring construction of hundreds of thousands of new condos and apartments near T stations.
But given the dire situation and decades of wheel spinning, there are also legitimate questions as to whether Baker’s big housing push goes far enough. The penalties for communities that don’t comply – the loss of a few popular but relatively modest grants – are small enough that local officials are openly discussing simply taking the hit.
Also, the scale of the Baker’s Housing Choice initiative, while larger than those of governors past, still falls short in dealing with our state’s massive housing shortfall.
Let’s say every single one of those 175 “MBTA communities” fully complies with the new law and rolls out new zoning rules allowing for new multi-family housing near their train, subway and buses stations. And we’ll put aside the fact that this is a near impossibility given the backlash against the plan by suburban leaders.
And let’s just say, for arguments sake, that developers swoop in and build every single possible apartment and condo allowed under the plan over the next 15 years, an even unlikelier possibility.
That would raise new housing construction back to levels last seen in the 1980s, when Massachusetts was roughly average in the amount of new housing produced, instead of being at the bottom of the pack, as it is now.
And back when, we had roughly a million fewer people living in the state.
We need to do a lot more than just building apartments near T stations to get us out of the hole we are in.
Welcome move: U.S. attorney eyes probe of Long Island bridge fiasco
It’s beyond disturbing that Quincy, out of pretty clear NIMBY motives, has succeeded now for years in blocking the rebuilding of the Long Island bridge.
Boston officials demolished the previous, decrepit span in 2015, forcing the closure of a major addiction treatment center on Long Island, a harbor island controlled by the city.
The bridge, which connected with Moon Island, and from there to a causeway to Quincy’s Squantum neighborhood, was the sole link between the Long Island Recovery Center and the mainland. The Long Island treatment center had 200 beds, while a homeless shelter on the island housed hundreds more.
The closure led to the scattering of recovery and addiction services and rise of issues like those seen at Mass and Cass.
However, when Mayor Marty Walsh pushed ahead with plans to rebuild the bridge, he ran into buzzsaw of opposition from Quincy officials complaining of ‘traffic.’ After legal challenges by Quincy officials, Boston’s push to build a new Long Island bridge landed in the court system, where it has been bogged down ever since.
Enter newly minted U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins, who, the Boston Herald reports, is “opening up an investigation into whether Quincy’s opposition to the Long Island Bridge amounts to civil-rights violations.”
In particular, Rollins, in a May 12 letter, put Quincy officials on notice, saying her investigation will look into whether the city violated “the Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes language forbidding discrimination against people with substance-abuse issues,” the Herald reports.
A stretch? We’ll see. But it’s worth a shot.
Home prices shatter prices again in Greater Boston
Speaking of home prices, did you see the latest report out of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors? At this pace, the median price of a single-family home in the Boston area will hit the $1 million in the next two or three years.
Don’t believe us? The median home price in the 66 communities tracked by GBAR hit an astonishing $845,000 in April.
That’s up 11 percent from last April and more than double what it was a decade ago in April, 2012, when the median price of a Boston area home was $400,000.
And condo prices are not far behind, crossing the $716,000 mark in April.
Quick hits:
If you want to see fewer Great White sharks off the coast of Cape Cod, then root for more orcas in these parts. Great White sharks fear them and usually flee when they're around. From the Globe: "'You don't see this everyday, folks.' Fishermen spot orca swimming off coast of Cape Cod."
Right on the mark: Joe Biden says ‘white supremacy is a poison’ after Buffalo shooting The Guardian
Chris Dempsey, running for state auditor, wins key endorsement: Dempsey Nabs Endorsement From Bump In Bid To Succeed Her State House News Service
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.