Boston is currently seeking handy volunteers who can help residents get small appliances and other items to working again, rather than simply tossing them in the trash. Read more.
Home 'n' hearth
The Somerville Media Fund reports the Somerville City Council voted to begin drafting a home-rule petition asking the state Legislature to let it take steps to rein in rent increases in the city. The Boston City Council last week approved its own home-rule petition for the power to set limits on how fast rents could be increased in older, larger buildings in the city.
Abby Niezgoda at NBC Boston reports city inspectors have condemned the under-renovation building at 43 Fleet St. that partially collapsed last week and that it will have to be torn down. Still up in the air: What happens to the neighboring buildings connected to it. In 2019, a building around the corner on North Street also had to be torn down after partially collapsing.
MassDOT says people living and working near the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel in East Boston can expect "vibration and noise" this weekend as workers demolish the current tunnel ceiling as part of the ongoing tunnel repair project.
The Zoning Board of Appeal today rejected a request by the owner of a third-floor condo at 8 Peters St. in South Boston to expand the size of the deck atop his triple decker from 85 to roughly 150 square feet after the two city councilors who live in South Boston said they are unalterably opposed to new or expanded roof decks as menaces to the neighborhood. Read more.
Disposed Allston mattress with something to say in 2018. Photo by Roman Lilligren
A state ban on the disposal of mattresses with your trash went into effect today, although the city of Boston alerted residents it will continue to collect mattresses put out on trash day until Jan. 1, if you insist, although it really wishes you wouldn't. Read more.
When you're suing your architects because, you say, they forced your home-expansion project to go more than $15 million over budget, you do things like hiring 19 extra lawyers to supplement the 6 you've already retained to go through the more than 2 million pages of documentation the architects produced in response to your "discovery" demands. Read more.
A Fenway landlord that wouldn't return the security deposit to two tenants who moved out in August, 2020 has to pay them that deposit times three, the costs of their attorney to get that check and now the extra legal fees they racked up when the landlord appealed a court's decision to grant the tenants their treble damages, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today. Read more.
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.
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