Contrarian Boston/01.26.2024

The faulty math of Newton’s striking teachers | Our not so “free trade” with China | Fort Point artists duke it out in court | Boston rents just keep going up | Failing BPS off the hot seat |

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Bad joke? Rents set new records in Greater Boston even as they start to decline in other cities across the country

The apartment market is cooling across the country, with rents falling in cities like Orlando, Austin and Las Vegas, to name a few.

But not here in Greater Boston. Two-bedroom rents in the Boston area topped $2,300 at the end of last year, having jumped by nearly a quarter since 2021, according to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

And rents were up locally again in January, with a two-bedroom up 3.3 percent compared to the first month of 2023, Apartment List reports.

The difference?

A resurgence in new construction nationally has added hundreds of thousands of new apartments to cities and suburbs across the country, helping satiate pent-up demand.

By contrast, residential construction, including apartments, fell by roughly a third across Massachusetts last year. In Boston proper, the decline was even worse, with new apartment and condo starts falling by 50 percent.

The latest batch of gloomy numbers come as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and her development team continue to mull a proposal to attempt to revive stalled apartment and condo projects with major tax breaks.

They might want to look to New York for advice. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans to revive a long-time state tax break designed to spur construction of new apartments and condominiums.

Breaking the bank: Newton School Committee chief warns meeting striking teacher demands could trigger worst job cuts in years

How bad? Think not just dozens of teachers, but 120 over the next six years, Chris Brezski, chair of the city’s school committee, told Contrarian Boston.

The first 60 job cuts would come in the first year, with another 60 over the following five years, said Brezski, who has been leading negotiations with the city’s striking teachers.

Brezski’s comments come as the two sides remain deadlocked amid an increasingly heated labor battle.

Newton educators hit the picket line on Jan. 19, the latest in a series of illegal strikes by educators across Massachusetts, spurred on by the hard-left leadership of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

There is a huge gap between the $100 million pay and benefits deal the Newton Teachers Association is demanding and the $45 million city school officials have put on the table.

The offer made by the School Committee, in turn, would have significantly boosted pay and benefits for Newton teachers, who now average $93,000 a year, putting the district in the middle of the pack compared to other comparable districts, some significantly wealthier.

The union’s demands go beyond just being simply a deal breaker to being completely untenable.

“We are miles apart,” Brezski said. “You are asking for something that in no universe can that math be made to work.”

(Chris Brezski, chair of the Newton School Committee)

Ok, for the cynics out there, a public employer like a school district making threats of dire consequences - like cuts and layoffs - can be par for the course in contentious union negotiations.

Yet there are also solid grounds for believing that Newton school officials are not simply crying wolf here.

The $55 million gap between what the two sides are offering is simply too big.

Somebody here is being unreasonable. And the somebody we would put our money on is the local teachers union and the influence exerted on it by the increasingly radicalized Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Teachers strikes, once rare in Massachusetts, have become a regular occurrence under the leadership of Max Page, a UMass Amherst college prof who has taken to running the state’s teachers’ union as if it were the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

Meanwhile, Andover, another wealthy local suburb, offers proof that yes, when school committee members insist they can’t afford to pay teachers a hefty raise, they are not always just full of hot air.

Andover school officials threw up the white flag after a three-day teachers strike in November, agreeing to a 17 percent pay boost for teacher in the town’s schools.

Two months later, Andover schools are weighing plans to lay off 36 teachers and staff and raise user fees for arts programs, The Eagle-Tribune reports.

Everything Ok? Members of prominent Boston arts group face off in court

That would be the Fort Point Arts Community.

A key player in the South Boston district whose old brick warehouses have long been a haven for artists of all types, FPAC helped develop a number of live-work artist buildings in Fort Point and beyond.