The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld the license suspension and fine a state board levied against a Peabody contractor who deposited money meant for an attic refurbishing project into his separate house-flipping business, stopped paying contractors, abandoned the job, filed for bankruptcy and then sued the couple after a judge declared his debt to them "nondischargeable." Read more.
Mayor Wu said today she wants Boston to join a state pilot that would let the city ban the use of natural gas and other fossil fuels for heating and cooking in new construction or major renovation projects. Read more.
The Boston Fire Department reports 11 people, one cat and one dog were displaced early this morning when the masonry veneer on one wall of 282 Sumner Street mostly collapsed into the narrow alleyway separating the three-family building from its neighbor.
ISD determined a structural engineer will have to come in and extensive repairs be made before the building is habitable again.
The owners of 24 condos at 88 and 90 Wareham St. in the South End are suing the developer, its real-estate agent and the manufacturer and installer of their building's car-stacking garage system, which they say has never worked right and which they say folded itself into complete unusability a couple months ago. Read more.
When the BPDA gave final approval in 2016 to plans to convert the Charlestown Navy Yard's historic Ropewalk building into apartments, the developer agreed to a condition that tenants with cars would have to provide proof they were leasing parking spaces elsewhere, since the building's grounds had no room for cars. Read more.
WBUR takes a look at efforts to buy spaces for artists in Boston, 11 years after one collective managed to raise more than $2 million in a couple of weeks for a building in Fort Point.
Boston can only enact limits on annual rent increases with the approval of the state legislature and the governor, and candidate Maura Healey said today that's not going to happen on her watch.
The city today announced a program called Solarize Eastie aimed at getting more solar panels on local roofs through discounts and other incentives. Read more.
Mayor Wu today announced she will use $60 million in federal Covid-19 relief money to build or buy affordable houses and condos, bolster down-payment assistance programs and expand a city program that reduces interest rates on mortgages. Read more.
While we haven't seen the TLF for a while here, their work continues apace. Can turkeys claim squatters rights?
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2022/04/08/wild-turkey-chestnut-hill-living-room/
Not long after approving a proposal for a roof deck on Worcester Street in the South End, the Zoning Board of Appeal today rejected a request for permission to build a new roof deck at 460 East 7th St. in South Boston. Read more.
Three tenants at the Georgetowne Homes development in Hyde Park are suing a Braintree law firm that filed to evict them and 110 other families last March, despite a city moratorium on evictions. Read more.
Mayor Wu today announced members of a rent stabilization advisory committee of "housing advocates, developers, tenants, and other stakeholders" that would develop proposed legislation to let Boston put some brakes on rapidly escalating rents, in a way the city hasn't seen since small landlords won a statewide referendum question in 1994 to ban rent ordinances in Boston, Brookline and Cambridge. Read more.
Nicole DaSilva has set up a GoFundMe page to help the 25 families who lost everything when their Maverick Street homes caught fire early Monday.
PBS's "This Old House yesterday started a new season focusing on Derek Rubinoff and Robyn Marder's 1894 home on a side street off Lagrange.
The ten-episode series follow as Rubinoff - himself an architect - and Marder and the show crew try to turn a 19th-century Victorian that had its last major upgrade in World War II into a 21st-century home while maintaining its Victorian charm.
A chilly Moss Hill resident who has been without heat since at least 4 p.m. reports on the huge hole National Grid now has on Moss Hill Road near Woodland Road: Read more.
A Housing Court judge yesterday denied the city's request to let its pandemic-related ban on evictions continue as it appeals her earlier decision to dismiss the ban. Read more.
Josh Bitker shows us the bottle opener he found when he cleaned out his for the first time in awhile.
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