A tiny device is identifying invisible health hazards in Boston schools
The district has deployed a first-of-its-kind network of indoor air pollution sensors that guide efforts to improve air quality — a move that research suggests could boost grades and cut down on sick days. The pandemic put a spotlight on indoor air quality and its role in preventing the spread of viruses. Schools across the country upgraded their HVAC systems, propped open windows, and installed air filters to reduce transmission.
The cities where buying a house is most and least affordable as mortgage rates change
When mortgage rates dropped to historic lows in 2021, below 3 percent, Britt Vaughan met with a real estate agent and tried to buy a home in Altadena, California, where he and his wife have lived for more than a decade. Vaughan, who works for a Los Angeles city agency, and his wife, a marriage and family therapist, had a budget and knew what they could afford. Month after month, he scrolled through real estate sites and fell into the gloomy habit of looking up the price of every house he passed with a “for sale” sign. But with student loans, and such unexpected events as a car crash and wildfire damage eating into their savings, they never felt ready to buy. All the while, home prices and mortgage rates kept climbing.
Amid housing crisis, Boston’s building boom has gone cold. How much of that is due to Mayor Wu?
Just a few years ago, Boston’s skyline was dotted with cranes, the visual manifestation of a building boom reshaping the city. Today, those cranes are all but gone. And construction has fallen sharply. Amid a shortage that has driven rents skyward and pushed some residents from the city, 2023 and 2024 were the slowest years for housing construction since 2011, city data show. Nationally, Boston is building fewer homes than many other peer cities, including Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Trump’s threat to Chinese international students puts academic exchange and tuition dollars at risk in Massachusetts
But on Wednesday, the US effectively pulled the welcome mat out from under the Chinese international students here, some 277,000 by most recent count. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the federal government would “aggressively” revoke visas of Chinese students, “including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
Poll shows most Mass. voters favor more housing despite local resistance
A new poll from MassINC, commissioned by the pro-housing group Abundant Housing Massachusetts, found that the majority of the state’s voters actually support new housing development, favoring it over other considerations like preserving the character of neighborhoods.
Build housing on public land? Yes, if it’s done right.
The Trump administration’s Joint Task Force on Federal Land for Housing is setting out to tackle a real issue in a promising way: America is in a housing crisis, and public lands are a viable path for narrowing the gap between housing supply and demand.
Why Massachusetts women have fewer children and Trump’s $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ won’t help
Experts caution that much of the nuance gets lost in the political noise. To better understand what’s behind Massachusetts’ baby bust — and whether proposals like President Trump’s suggested $5,000 “baby bonus” could reverse it — the Globe spoke with leading demographers, epidemiologists, and public health researchers. These experts point not to a single cause, but to a tangle of interwoven factors — some personal, others structural.
Community benefit or conflict? A neighborhood fund and a Boston city councilor’s role in it.
The proposal called for converting the historic but derelict Alexandra Hotel in the South End into a 70-unit condominium tower. To build good will in the neighborhood, the developers committed to making a six-figure “community benefits” donation. The recipient? An obscure nonprofit, District 7 Community Fund Inc., the only known type of community benefits fund in Boston set up to benefit a single city council district.
Using tax dollars to block new housing is bad policy
Ashland and another dirty dozen Greater Boston communities were identified in a recent report published by the research arm of the Boston Foundation as places where “Public opposition to housing is so extreme. . . that public land has become weaponized as a tool to stop housing development, rather than an opportunity to subsidize affordable housing.”
Where can Massachusetts build more housing? How about publicly owned land?
Ask people why we don’t build more housing in Greater Boston, and some will say there just isn’t enough land here anymore. As the region has grown, the developable land in Boston and its surrounding cities and suburbs has been snatched up and built out, which makes solving a housing crisis that demands building thousands of new homes a tricky prospect.