12.11.2022

Ivory tower revolutionary | MassGOP’s stubborn losers | City Council showdown over Wu development shakeup | Quick hits | About Contrarian Boston |

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Miles Howard created The Walking City Trail through Boston’s urban wild. With housing costs through the roof, now he’s thinking of leaving town.

Howard is the creator of the increasingly popular urban hiking trail in Boston that wends its way from one end of the city to the other, across nature reserves, parking lots and water features alike.

It was a brilliant idea. Howard, a freelance journalist, photographer, and avid hiker, spent two and a half months mapping out the 25-mile-long path.

Now Howard, 34, tells Contrarian Boston he’s thinking of leaving Boston, unable to find an affordable alternative to the cramped and dingy Jamaica Plain apartment he shares with two roommates.

“I am feeling the pressure of needing to figure out how to continue living here, while also feeling like there are no viable options available,” Howard said. “It is feeling increasingly desperate and absurd,” he said, adding he has even contemplated a career change to afford to stay.

Miles Howard climbing Mount Lafayette and taking a rest stop at Greenleaf Hut. Howard has taken his love of hiking to Boston’s urban core, creating The Walking City Trail.

Howard says he’s spent the last year getting his name on every affordable housing list he can find, while scouring apartment listings and talking to friends, to no avail.

Howard, who feels increasingly invested in Boston’s civic and cultural fabric, does not want to move to Providence or Philadelphia or some other somewhat less expensive city, as many of his friends have over the past few years.

His fantasy is to find his own apartment for $1,000 a month, something he acknowledges would be a rare, if not an impossible find, in Boston.

Even though his income is only roughly half the area median, Howard ironically makes too little to qualify for some affordable apartments in Boston. In these cases, the rental subsidy is not enough to cover truly lower-income tenants like Howard.

Howard has taken to Twitter to reflect on the situation he and so many others find themselves in. He says his purpose is not to complain about his own circumstances, knowing there are many others in even more meager circumstances.

Rather, his aim is to spark a larger discussion on the housing crisis that has made putting a roof over one’s head an epic challenge, not just in Boston, but across the region and increasingly across the country as well.

Artists and creatives - and we think Howard certainly qualifies as such - are increasingly being driven out of Greater Boston. And we are all the poorer for it.

Elections have consequences? Tell that to the losing cast of characters that’s dominating the MassGOP

Jim Jones Lyons, the chair of the fast-sinking state Republican party, shows no signs of quitting his post after leading the MassGOP to the edge of electoral extinction in last month’s election.

Lyons hasn’t made any official announcements on whether he will run again. But with a vote the state party chair coming up next month, all signs point to the MassGOP chair digging in and battling to retain his perch.

He’s not alone. Republican Rayla Campbell ran for secretary of state, only to lose to Bill Galvin by nearly 40 points, 67.7 to 29.3 percent.

Asked by Contrarian Boston whether she would be running again, Campbell retorted “why wouldn’t I?”

Rayla Campbell, from her campaign website

While by any objective terms, Campbell suffered a crushing defeat, she offered up all sorts of alternative metrics, which we don’t have the time and patience to get into here, to argue that her losing campaign was actually a smashing success.

Campbell, who has been a bit of a perennial candidate for various offices, made headlines with her speech at the MassGOP’s convention last spring, but for all the wrong reasons.

In explicit terms, the Republican nominee for secretary of state claimed outlandishly that schools are teaching five-year-old boys to perform oral sex on each other.

Campbell made banning some LGTBQ-themed books from school libraries a centerpiece of her campaign for the state’s third highest office.

What that has to do with the job of secretary of state remains a mystery.

Max Page is the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s answer to 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman. Is the union chief seriously going to help set education policy for the state?

We’re betting Gov.-elect Maura Healey is probably too shrewd a politician and too pragmatic a progressive to let an ideologue like the MTA president to run wild.

That said, Healey appointed Page, a long-time UMass Amherst prof who sounds more like a campus activist than a union boss, to her transition team.

And boy, Page, has been spouting off lately, and then some.

The teachers union chief has derided college and career readiness programs as driven by the “capitalist class” and its “need for profits,” while calling for the neutering, if not scrapping altogether, of the MCAS testing system.

With the American public school system built on the rotten foundations of the “fear of social dynamite” and the “imperatives of economic growth,” nothing short of the complete demolition of the system as we know it will do, Page told members of the state board of education in August.

“We have no model to truly reform, so we must conceive and build anew,” Page said, vowing the MTA would continue its crusade against MCAS “as long as it takes to tear down the system you are perpetuating.”

1960s student radical - and pride of Worcester - Abbie Hoffman back in the day. (By Richard O. Barry from San Diego)

Now Page is pushing to give teachers and other public sector employees the right to strike, as he announced at a State House event on Thursday, flanked by educators and “supportive lawmakers,” State House News reported.

"It's time now to achieve the right to strike, return what is a human right back to the public sector workers," Page said.

If parents were none too thrilled with remote schooling, they are just going to love it when teachers across the state hit the picket lines while the kids watch TV at home.

And the fact is, no one is arresting, nor should they arrest, teachers who go on strike now. If anything, the current law puts pressure on both sides to quickly come to an agreement.

So what’s Healey to do?

As head of the MTA, Page led a successful, multimillion-dollar campaign that pushed the millionaire’s tax over the top at the ballot box.

That gives the MTA chief a lot of juice politically on Beacon Hill, so Healey is going to have to throw a bone to teachers’ union and Page, the ivory tower revolutionary.

But just what that bone will be - and what it will cost - is another question altogether.

Stay tuned.

Batter up: Monday showdown looms over key part of Wu’s ambitious overhaul of Boston development

Mayor Michelle Wu’s plan for a nearly clean sweep of a city board that decides the fate of hundreds of small- and mid-sized projects, many involving new housing, has been stalled for more than two months.

The result has meant that the Zoning Board of Appeals at times has struggled to put enough bodies in seats to achieve a quorum and do business, with developers and other proponents putting a hold on plans for badly needed housing.

But City Councilor Frank Baker, in charge of reviewing Wu’s plans to replace 10 of the ZBA’s 14 board members, has finally agreed to hold a hearing on the appointments, Universal Hub reports.

The hearing is slated for 2 p.m. Monday, Dec. 12 at City Hall before the planning, transportation and development committee that Baker chairs.

Baker, whose district comprises Dorchester and parts of South Boston and the South End, is a frequent Wu critic and one of the most conservative members of the Boston City Council, so it should be an interesting hearing.

Some had hoped the City Council would have voted quickly to approve in early October Wu’s slate of candidates, a mix of nonprofit community developers, neighborhood activists and construction union officials.

The ZBA nominees were then referred to Baker, who then proceeded to do nothing.

It’s not clear what Baker’s objections are, though concerns have been raised about the practicality of replacing almost the entire board at once given its heavy and complex caseload.

Quick hits:

But is it really? “Democratic majority in the Senate is a mandate for a progressive agenda” U.S. Sen. Ed Markey/Boston Globe

Not a good look for pot shop that touts its commitment to social justice: '“Boston marijuana shop opens with construction workers unpaid” CommonWealth Magazine

Art or a very expensive eyesore? “BU finishes its ‘Jenga Building,’ the most environmentally friendly tower in the city” Boston Globe

Get over it. Starbucks billionaire’s feelings are apparently hurt over unionization drive. “Why Is Howard Schultz Taking This So Personally”   New York Times

Boston’s development agency got things rolling on this front this fall. Looks like other departments are following suit: “In expensive Boston, longstanding residency requirements appear back on the bargaining table” Boston Herald

About Contrarian Boston

I have fielded emails over the past couple of months 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.