Only days after announcing a plan to seek state approval to raise property tax rates on commercial property owners, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu filed a $4.6 billion budget plan for 2025 that would hike city spending by 8 percent, or $344 million.
The last week shows progress is likely to be two steps forward and one step back given decades of neglected maintenance at the T and the NIMBY backlash to the Healey administration’s housing plans.
Gov. Maura Healey is still waiting for the legislature to act on her big housing bill, but she paused Monday to swear in two panels of developers, municipal leaders and advocates Monday, charged with charting more housing production reforms.
Gov. Maura Healey’s signature piece of housing legislation got its first hearing on Beacon Hill last week, a marathon affair that suggested that many of the main battle lines are being drawn over policy, not the bill’s fiscal impacts.
Boston’s groundbreaking law cutting large buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions is set to gain a set of teeth, but a leading real estate group says the measure could drive up rents and make the affordability crisis worse.
Boston won’t pursue a ban on fossil fuel-burning building systems in new developments, a key element of Mayor Michelle Wu’s environmental sustainability platform.
Housing advocates know a supply shortage is behind our runaway rents. But their two closest groups of allies sit on either side of the issue, and each see the debate in existential terms.
As we continue to navigate the coming months, it is important policymakers do no harm to the industry so that as financing loosens up, projects can move forward without additional cost constraints.
Developers say Boston’s newest version of a plan to increase affordability requirements will virtually halt housing development thanks to tough financing conditions.
Boston Planning & Development Agency Director Arthur Jemison said project approvals won’t be delayed by developers’ disclosures about their diversity strategies, despite the agency’s elevated emphasis on increasing equity in the local commercial real estate industry.
Bold action must be taken, along with critical short-term strategies that effectively balance our continued economic growth with our long-term decarbonization and environmental goals.
Two of the region’s largest owners of office buildings and towers have a bone to pick with Kastle, the company which tracks office building occupancy, saying it’s reporting overly pessimistic data.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of renovation and repositioning projects planned downtown could leave Boston’s best office towers stronger than ever despite office market upheaval.
High housing costs helped force tens of thousands more Bay Staters to move away last year than immigrants who picked us as their new home for the first time in many years, experts say, ringing alarm bells about the state’s ability to sustain itself.
Other cities’ experiments with “rent control 2.0” offer clues to how Boston Mayor Michelle Wu may try to fulfil a key campaign promise while keeping developers on-side.
Affordable and middle-income workforce housing is critical to the region’s competitiveness, and NAIOP believes that solutions focused on housing production and expanding rental assistance are a better focus for policymakers.
The news is dire. We immediate action to address the monumental threat of climate change. But Massachusetts must be strategic about how we tackle this challenge, and avoid well-intentioned but deeply flawed ideas.
Boston’s new planning chief appealed to the real estate industry for help addressing a staffing shortage at city hall, saying it would help developments get reviewed and approved more quickly.
In what looks to be an emerging trend, Boston’s mayor is leaning heavily on housing advocates for advice on highly-charged real estate issues, while excluding outspoken critics.
