Remains of a house embedded in the truck.
Live Boston reports that the driver of a tractor trailer slammed into several houses on Hampden Street near Dubois Street in Roxbury around 1 p.m. on Thursday. Boston EMS transported the injured driver to a local hospital, but no residents were hurt in the crash, in which the driver first crashed into a UPS truck before hitting the houses, Live Boston reports.
The Boston Department of Neighborhood Development said today it's postponing a home-buying expo scheduled for this Saturday at the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center in Roxbury due to Covid-19 concerns.
The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday denied a request from the owner of a house on Harvest Street to add dormers to her attic so she could build a master bedroom there and move in - after neighbors, the local civic association and several elected officials opposed her proposal. Read more.
The Globe reports: "Building permits for new housing in Boston fell by nearly one-quarter in 2019, city data show."
Bloomberg reports Boston-area rents dropped 0.2% from September to October, which, when coupled with an even smaller decrease in New York rents, was apparently enough to cause an unexpected bit of a slowdown in national inflation numbers.
French Toast reports this 1945 oil-tank certificate is still hanging in the basement of her Dorchester home.
Mission Hill's Boston Building Resources, which specializes in recycling cool home-improvement stuff, was left wondering by a recent donation of a shovel with a seven-foot-long handle: Like what was it used for?
The Harvard Gazette reports the Arnold Arboretum has become part of a three-year study to see whether a moth species native to Ukraine can help battle the pod-producing black swallow wort, a particularly noxious and fast-growing weed that kills monarch butterflies - and nearby plants of other species. Read more.
In a series of 311 complaints, a Jamaica Pond resident tells the story of the old desk he or she no longer wanted but which required far more work than expected to have city trash collectors take it away.
The Pondview Avenue resident disassembled the desk, took it outside on Tuesday - and then was put out to come home and find the thing still on the curb and so filed the first of several reports: Read more.
Evacuating residents. Photo by BFD.
The city opened the Jackson-Mann School as an emergency shelter after the Boston Fire Department evacuated residents of the ten-story building at 15 N. Beacon St. due to "major" flooding that started on the fifth floor around midnight. Read more.
The Boston Sun reports some New York company has been doing Airbnb-like rentals on new apartments in the South End without registering them with the city or bothering to alert neighbors.
The new owners of the Fairlawn Apartment complex off Cummins Highway in the southern part of Mattapan have renamed it SoMa Apartments at the T, now that a Fairmount Line station has opened across the street: Read more.
The BPDA is out with its 2019 affordable-housing numbers, which the city uses to determine the most a family can make to apply for one of the "affordable" apartments or condos developers are required to build or pay for in exchange for approval of their projects. Read more.
A proposal by City Councilor Althea Garrison (at large) to study how to bring rent control back to Boston was met with virulent opposition from three councilors who rent out units who thundered rent control would turn the city into the sort of hellhole they said it was back before voters statewide eliminated rent control in 1994. Read more.
Many Boston homeowners with large enough basements and attics would no longer have to go before the zoning board to turn them into apartments under a proposal that could go before the Zoning Commission next month for approval and inclusion in the city zoning code. Read more.
State Rep. Liz Miranda (D-5th Suffolk) writes:
I'm an elected official and I cant afford to buy a home of my dreams in Roxbury. Everyday my family gets calls and letters to buy our homes, cash. Its harassment. Its greed. Its absurd.
Roxbury is tired. We are tired.
Go develop your suburban towns.
Go speculate your land.
Maria M .spotted this plea to the local turkeys in Cambridge today.
Copyright Maria M. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
Downtown's population increased 54% between 2010 and 2017 - to 17,581 - according to a profile of the neighborhood released yesterday by the BPDA, which says the number of residents should continue to increase as the more than 2,100 new housing units approved by the city between 2014 and 2018 are completed. Read more.
Are you missing the poetry of the late Mayor Thomas M. Menino? Are you in Boston and in your feelings? Feel like writing something other than internet comments to complete strangers? Then check out the call for submissions for the 2019 Mayor's Poetry Program, curated by Porsha Olayiwola, the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Boston:
“an Alcatraz around my neck"
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