You might feel a little clau$terphobic, but....
"Walsh wants 53,000 more housing units in Boston by 2030" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff October 09, 2014
Boston needs to build 53,000 housing units by 2030 to keep pace with rapid population growth that is already increasing prices and squeezing out low- and middle-income residents, according to a city report....
That is the world in which we live.
The [plan] would offer developers tax incentives and other assistance to help reach that goal.
The $ame old failed $olutions.
He also wants to increase annual city funding for low-income housing by 65 percent, to $51 million, and require developers of downtown luxury complexes to pay more and build affordable units at other locations.
“This plan will allow people to buy homes and stay in their neighborhoods,” Walsh said, adding that he would seek to concentrate development around MBTA stations. “The quicker we create housing, the faster we stabilize the market.”
The 131-page report is the mayor’s first comprehensive attempt to address one of Boston’s most vexing problems — a widening income divide undermining economic diversity and pushing families out of neighborhoods where they have lived for generations.
Some of the proposals are similar to a smaller scale plan advanced by Thomas M. Menino, the former mayor, late in his administration.
After he presided over 20 years of tossing wealth upward. Wow, no wonder the Globe glowed about his tenure.
In a press conference Wednesday, Walsh spoke about the issue in personal terms, describing the plight of a family forced to leave their home in the mayor’s own Dorchester neighborhood.
“They got a letter that they’re being evicted because somebody bought their house,” he said. “You can’t blame the new owner for wanting to condo-ize the building, but we’re losing the stability of having that family there. They raised four kids there and where do they go? That’s why we’re doing this plan.”
Where was all the concern during the fraudulent foreclosures by Wall Street?
Rising rents and home prices are affecting neighborhoods across the city. During the past year, for example, a middle-income household earning $80,000 a year could only afford 1.7 percent of homes on the market in Downtown Boston. That family could afford only 4.7 percent of homes in South Boston, a traditionally working class enclave.
The number of people living in the city with earnings at or below median income levels is expected to increase in coming years, with senior citizens making up a large part of the demand. According to the report, an additional 14,600 units will be needed for people over 65 earning less than $50,000 a year, a 52 percent increase from 2010.
Prices have risen so much in some neighborhoods near downtown that Walsh and his aides concluded that building low- and middle-income housing there is no longer possible. Instead, they hope to spur construction in neighborhoods such as East Boston, Allston-Brighton, Dorchester, and Roxbury, where land is cheaper and more plentiful.
Part of the plan also includes construction of 16,000 units of student housing on campus by 2030, cutting by 50 percent the number of students living in private homes and freeing up that space for working individuals or families. The mayor said he would be receptive to private development proposals creating more housing for students by building student villages and other large complexes.
Gonna fix the slums are they?
To produce more middle-income housing, the report proposes construction of large-scale housing complexes near MBTA stations, where developers could trim costs by building fewer parking spaces for residents.
When there is already a shortage?
The city is also considering zoning incentives that would allow developers to construct taller buildings in select areas. Multiyear property tax breaks could also be added to make projects more profitable.
Even when they are doing $omething for you they are not!
“We all know there is demand” for middle-income housing, Walsh said. “If we can create a market in these different areas, then people are going to come and build.”
The "middle class" is disappearing, the 1% are grabbing all the wealth, and this article confirms it. I suppose the elite of Bo$ton need to feel good about there greed, and thus there is the Bo$ton Globe. Good God!
Yeah, if they build it....
Walsh, athletes press for Boston Olympics in 2024
High-tech tool to help make case for Boston Olympics
They are Fishing around for the Games and now selling an idea.
Without financial incentive, the mayor’s report concludes, developers will continue to focus on building luxury complexes that command the highest rents and offer the best returns.
I was told our $y$tem worked for everyone.
More than 8,000 new apartments are expected to be completed in Boston during the next three years, but the vast majority are expected to rent for $3,500 a month or more.
Housing specialists said city officials must move swiftly to streamline building regulations and allow developers to take advantage of Boston’s thriving economy.
For a certain $elect and cho$en few, yeah.
“We have to do this right and we have to do it big,” said Richard Taylor, director of the Center for Real Estate at Suffolk University. “Boston is a highly sought-after market by developers, but the complaints are that land is too expensive and the process is too complicated. Those are the areas we need to chip away at.”
The report proposes to help speed the city’s development review process, particularly for builders proposing new housing on small, privately owned parcels. That could help spur production in densely-packed areas, where building proposals often face long delays.
Some of the region’s largest housing builders are already increasing their investments in Boston....
Historically, AvalonBay Communities Inc., has focused its investment in suburban areas, but it is now building more than 1,100 apartments in Boston.
While those units are targeted to wealthier renters, Michael Roberts, senior vice president for AvalonBay Communities Inc., said the company “would be very interested in finding a way to make middle-income housing work.”
Except there is no more middle class in Bo$ton.
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Maybe you could rent a room instead:
"Boston offers a plan to help colleges add dorms" by Matt Rocheleau | Globe correspondent October 09, 2014
The proposal, greeted positively by officials at several colleges, comes amid increasing concern over shoddy, dangerous conditions common in off-campus student housing. The additional dorm space would give colleges greater oversight of students and ease the rapid growth of the student rental market in many neighborhoods.
Devin Quirk, director of operations at Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development, said the city would facilitate partnerships between colleges and private developers to build new dorms, with one or more colleges agreeing to lease all or portions of the buildings.
Such agreements would save schools from having to put up large amounts of capital to construct the facilities, while giving developers a guarantee that the property would be rented. Privately developed dorms can also be taxed, unlike dorms built solely by colleges, which are classified as nonprofits, city officials said.
Lesson one: It's ALL ABOUT THE F***ING MONEY!
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A series of Globe reports last spring uncovered illegal and dangerous living conditions, widespread overcrowding, and sanitary problems in neighborhoods popular with students. The city vowed to step up code enforcement over such issues.
See: Slumming Around Boston
“My greatest concern is the health and safety of every young college student living off campus in overcrowded apartments” Walsh wrote.
However, the city acknowledged it has yet to fulfill its promise to increase the number of inspectors.
That's because politicians and government are only interested in damage control.
Some landlords and tenants have resisted efforts to follow city housing codes. Students say they are forced to share crowded apartments simply to afford the rent.
In Bo$ton?
For years, residents and families — fed up with both rising rents and quality-of-life issues associated with college students, including loud parties and drunken vandalism — have demanded that colleges house and police more of their own students, particularly undergraduates....
Party poopers who hate the economy and late night T!
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I see it is “refreshing that [Walsh] has brought universities into the conversation.”
That must mean Menino never did.
Even the animals are getting better treatment even if the living conditions are the same.
And for those without a home:
"Harbor bridge closing brings hunt for new shelters, services; Forces shift of hundreds needing shelter, services" by David Abel and Laura Crimaldi | Globe Staff October 09, 2014
City officials were scrambling Thursday to find shelter for more than 400 homeless people and as many as 300 others in recovery programs on Long Island after a state inspection found that an aging two-lane bridge connecting the island in Boston Harbor to the mainland was too dangerous for vehicles to cross.
It could be as long as five years and cost some $90 million before the 64-year-old bridge is replaced.
With winter approaching, social service providers throughout the city worried that the decision to close the city’s largest homeless shelter would have a major ripple effect on their already strained resources. In recent years, the shelter has housed nearly 600 people on the coldest nights of the year.
Good thing we are in the midst of rampant global warming.
“This bridge should have been fixed a long time ago,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said at a news conference outside City Hall on Thursday, noting that city officials had been aware of the bridge’s deteriorating conditions for years.
That means Menino neglect while all that wealth was pouring into Bo$ton all this time.
Boston no longer a haven, I gue$$.
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The abrupt decision to close the bridge came on Wednesday afternoon, when state inspectors, using new criteria to judge the reliability of bridges, determined that the rusting mass of steel plates, concrete, and rebar was no longer safe, even for the few vehicles allowed to cross. For years, a gate has blocked access to the span, with guards allowing only authorized vehicles, such as the buses that bring an average of 440 homeless people a night onto the island.
Related:
"The idea that suddenly, late in the afternoon on a Wednesday in October 2014, the bridge was too unsafe to use and everybody had to run for their lives like it was the London Blitz makes no sense to anyone — I mean everyone."
Yeah, WTF?
Officials at the state Department of Transportation said it appears to make more sense to replace the city-owned bridge, which is known as the Long Island Viaduct and connects to Moon Island. The state has previously offered to share the design costs of replacing the bridge, but Boston will probably have to pay to rebuild it.
Because the bridge is considered a private way and is not on the National Bridge Inventory, federal dollars are unlikely to be available for its replacement.
City officials said the bridge was last inspected sometime between 2010 and 2011. They said it is typically inspected every two years.
The bridge has been clearly deteriorating over the years — only one vehicle is allowed to cross at a time — but city officials did not expect that it would have to be closed so suddenly.
They said it became urgent to do so because the structural deficiencies mirrored those that caused a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis to collapse in 2007, but that was likely to mean more of a burden on other social service agencies throughout the region....
The “homeless increase a shocker?”
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Related: Will Walsh fight hard for housing?
Here is your answer:
"Mayor Walsh vows to keep Long Island Bridge open" by Meghan E. Irons and Andrew Ryan | Globe staff October 11, 2014
Mayor Martin J. Walsh pledged Friday to restore the 63-year-old Long Island Bridge and reopen the link to an island sanctuary that houses Boston’s largest homeless shelter, programs for recovering addicts, and a camp where urban youth escape summertime violence. But that could take as long as five years.
He may not even be in office then.
The city closed the bridge Wednesday after a state inspection found that it was too unstable for vehicles. Repairs could cost $80 million, a daunting undertaking that has given ammunition to critics pushing for the bridge to be razed and replaced by ferry service.
I was told $90 million above, but what is a measly $10 million, 'eh?
And if it was only the bridge that was unsafe why not just leave the people there and ferry in supplies as needed? Another mind-manipulating preparation exercise for martial law, 'eh?
But Walsh remained resolute that the city would repair the rusting, 3,450-foot steel truss structure that has been a lifeline to many.
“I’ll fix the bridge,” Walsh said. “We have a lot of social programs on Long Island. We have a shelter, and we have a reentry program that is vital to reducing crime. This is a social service island that has a lot of agencies.”
The city has invested tens of millions of dollars to keep the bridge operable, and Walsh said he will ensure that Long Island maintains its role in the city.
Then it must have all been wasted.
He said he has no plans to move the social service agencies to other locations. City officials are trying to ensure that the hundreds of people who were displaced find accommodations elsewhere in Boston, the mayor said.
The estimated five-year timeline described by Walsh raises the prospect that the homeless and others receiving services on the island will be taken in by alternative shelters for years, unless the city devises a temporary transportation option, such as a ferry.
The administration of Walsh’s predecessor, Thomas M. Menino, initiated an effort to replace the bridge, and the city’s most recent capital budget, signed by Walsh, included $35 million to cover the cost of half the project over the next five years. The goal was to get matching grants from the state and other sources.
Why was it allowed to reach such disrepair amidst the gleam of downtown Bo$ton?
The city also spent tens of millions of dollars on repairs over the years, with $4 million more in fixes budgeted for this year.
Looking more and more like a black hole.
“Anytime we were notified that there was a problem, we took care of it,” Menino said Friday, adding that it had been prohibitively expensive to replace the bridge sooner. “It cost $80 million to do, and the state would not cooperate.”
Whatever.
Walsh said that when he took office, he was made aware that the bridge was deteriorating but hoped the bridge could be used a few more years while the city planned a restoration. He envisioned restoring a large section of the bridge, and city officials had been soliciting bids for a design, a spokeswoman said.
Just bad timing then?
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has agreed to pay half the design costs, which are expected to be $9 million. The state does not plan to contribute any additional funding, said Michael Verseckes, a department spokesman.
The replacement project would be done a span at a time, said Walsh spokeswoman Melina Schuler.
“We hope that half of the project costs will come from outside sources, most likely MassDOT,” Schuler said in an e-mail.
Related: Transportation Secretary Richard Davey to step down
That won't patch things up.
The bridge was constructed in 1951 and maintenance of the bridge was continuing this year, city officials said.
There was a 2007 inspection, a 2008 report, a 2010 inspection, and a 2012 inspection.
State inspectors, using new criteria to judge the reliability of bridges, determined that the rusting mass of steel plates, concrete, and rebar was no longer safe, a finding that resulted in the bridge’s closing this week.
A gate has blocked access for years, and only authorized vehicles, such as buses that bring an average of 440 homeless people a night onto the island, were allowed to pass by guards.
The bridge has long been a source of contention among Boston, Quincy, and the state. The bridge can be reached only through Quincy, but is owned and controlled by the City of Boston, which operates a guardhouse at the entrance.
When tall ships sailed into Boston Harbor in 1992, a throng of angry Quincy residents marched on the guardhouse and chanted, “The Tall Ships are coming, and so are we.”
They will be back in 2017.
The crowd of 400 wanted access to Long Island, the best vantage point for viewing the ships, but Boston’s mayor at the time, Raymond L. Flynn, barred Quincy residents.
During his 20 years in office, Menino developed an emotional attachment to Long Island. The former mayor and businessman Jack Connors used the far end to build Camp Harbor View, which aims to stem summer violence by giving urban youth a place to experience Boston Harbor.
Related: Closure of bridge may not halt Camp Harbor View
Menino said his administration never entertained moving the homeless shelter and other facilities, including recovery programs, off Long Island.
“That’s the only location in the city of Boston that works,” the former mayor said.
But through the years, the city has had to grapple with a critical question: Is the bridge worth saving?
“I say forget the bridge and start looking for alternatives that can cost much less,” said Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey, a former state senator from Quincy who has long urged the dismantling of the bridge. “But the city has never been willing to consider that.”
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Walsh said he is open to ferry service, but said other matters loom, such as how to handle medical emergencies experienced by the homeless people and others on the island.
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Related: Long Island span closes: A bridge to somewhere?
Don't cross it until you come to it:
"As bridge closed, a long night led to purgatory" by David Abel | Globe staff October 11, 2014
The residents of Joelyn’s Family Home were sitting for a meal of beef and broccoli Wednesday afternoon when a police officer burst into the newly renovated shelter on Long Island with bad news.
“Don’t be alarmed, but we need you to get off the island,” the officer told the homeless women and the staff.
Some of the women, there for several months to recover from drug addictions, feared there had been a terrorist attack.
Pfffft!
They had no idea where they were going or what would become of them and their few possessions: pictures of their children, vital documents, medication, jewelry, bedding, their favorite jeans.
The women panicked, and tears flowed as word spread that the old, rickety bridge from the mainland to their shelter in Boston Harbor had been condemned.
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Mindy Miller, a senior counselor at the home, and the other staff members could not believe the closure of the bridge had come so suddenly, and they were annoyed the police had not shared the news with them privately. They were galled that there was no advance planning and that they would have to figure out where to take the women as they evacuated.
Yeah, what's up with that? No heads up?
During two chaotic hours, they took what they could, and staff ushered them onto the program’s two large passenger vans.
As one van rolled toward the rusted span, Miller recalled later, the anxiety surged.
“Are we safe?” a woman asked in the back seat.
Another responded: “I don’t want to go over the bridge.”
Yet another said: “I hope we don’t fall in the water.”
After Miller’s van crossed a portion of the 3,000-foot, two-lane bridge, she sought to allay their fears. “Don’t worry, girls, we just passed the part of the bridge they’re worried about,” she said. “We’re going to be safe.”
The entire bridge was unsafe, she knew, but her words helped calm their nerves and got them across without any panic attacks.
I'm tired of being lied to, you?
About a half mile later, Miller’s van parked in a large lot on Moon Island, where for years MBTA buses have brought more than 400 people every day to the island’s large emergency homeless shelter.
It was about 7 p.m. The lot was dark and filled with hundreds of people from the emergency shelter, Miller recalled, as well as from many of the other recovery programs on the island. There were people crying, knowing that they would be separated from friends and staff. Some complained that it was like they were being evicted all over again.
Staff, too, were consoling each other, many of them expecting they were now probably out of a job.
Miller called her director, who was still with the other van on the island. “This isn’t going to work,” she recalls telling her. “There are too many people here.”
So they decided to meet in another lot near the Quincy T Station.
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Staff members at their Boston headquarters were furious, but the women were among the island’s luckier residents....
Jonathan Scott, the chief executive of Victory Programs, said he was still fuming.
“We were never given any indication that something like this was about to happen,” he said. “This has put our entire agency in a devastating, catastrophic financial crisis.”
“I’ve never seen anything this ridiculous,” he said. “I’m still jumping out of my skin.”
In an interview Friday, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said the rush to move the people off the island could not be avoided.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “We found out that the bridge was structurally unsafe. I wasn’t going to risk keeping people on the island. . . . I couldn’t afford to have somebody driving over the bridge and have the bridge collapse.”
And how could you ever question authority?
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Related: Firefighters remind residents on smoke detector safety
Only if you have a home?
"Evans defends Boston police after ACLU report on racial bias; Cites stress on crime, not race" by Evan Allen and Travis Andersen | Globe Staff October 08, 2014
Boston police officers disproportionately observed, interrogated, or searched black residents from 2007 to 2010, according to the preliminary results of a study commissioned by the department that were released Wednesday.
“This study shows evidence not just of racial disparity, but of racial bias,” said Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which collaborated with the Boston Police Department on the genesis of the study, and on Wednesday released its own analysis of the data. “That is really alarming.”
Is it?
But Commissioner William Evans defended the department, and said that officers focused on high-crime areas and individuals with gang affiliations and criminal records. He noted that the data were years old, but acknowledged the racial disparity in encounters with Boston police.
Evans also said the department has since overhauled its procedures for stopping residents and has instituted new racial profiling and bias training. Overall, he said, the report shows the work of a police department focused on violence, not race....
It shows.
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Just playing around, huh?
Walsh threatens to veto City Council pay raise
City Council head now says pay raise can wait
Boston city councilors vote for $20,000-a-year raise
City lawyer says mayor can stop council pay raises
Mayor Walsh should veto excessive City Council pay hike
Time to get the hell out of Boston.
