The challenges faced by the Boston housing market have been well documented in 2020. The pandemic has caused massive shifts in urban population distribution in metropolitan areas all across the country, and Boston is no exception. It effectively took one of the nation’s hottest real estate markets and caused it to come to a grinding halt as apartment vacancies soar all over the city.
The Heights reports Boston College has canceled spring break so it can start the spring semester later. Students will get a spring-break day, however.
That was some storm that just came through. Josh Bitker snapped Huron Avenue in Cambridge, where a tree came down, taking trackless-trolley lines with it as it crashed onto a car parked in what turned out to be the wrong place. Read more.
Update: 1:40 p.m. A hazmat crew in the building got no hydrogen-sulfide readings; the gas has dissipated through the lab vent system.
Boston firefighters are at Boston College, at the Brighton/Newton line, where a liter bottle of hydrogen sulfide has leaked in Merkert Hall, inside a hood, at least, which might minimize exposure and its rotten-egg smell. Police have been requested to block traffic on Beacon Street.
And at least one Newton city councilor is pretty damned pissed about right now: Read more.
The other day, Samuel Watson was kayaking on the Charles River, about a half mile down from Millennium Park in West Roxbury, when he spotted this coyote.
Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller reported tonight that the state has changed Newton's Covid-19 risk level from "low" to "moderate" because the city's average number of new daily cases has increased to 4.1 from 1.9 last week - which she said is not due just to the the Boston College outbreak but also because: Read more.
With Boston College in the news because of a Covid-19 outbreak, a school vice president e-mailed students Friday afternoon reminding them to wear masks, social distance and not have parties, at the risk of suspension. The student newspaper, the Heights, however, reported on the scene on campus Friday night: Read more.
Newton and Boston are taking over Covid-19 tracking and followup of positive cases from Boston College now that the school has become the first in the Boston area to develop a Covid-19 outbreak, Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said tonight. Read more.
Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller announced this afternoon that a 55-year-old Needham man was charged with operating to endanger and failure to use care when starting a motor vehicle for an incident on Tuesday in which, after shouting at Black Lives Matter demonstrators at City Hall, he got in his pickup and accelerated away, narrowly missing several of the teens.
BIPOC in Newton posted some video snippets from the interaction between teens holding a BLM rally at City Hall and a middle-aged white guy who, after failing to convince the students they were wrong by yelling at them, got into his pickup and sped away, missing some of the students by inches (fourth video at that link). Read more.
UMass Amherst yesterday notified students and parents that students who want to return to campus this fall can do so, with major restrictions (like no visitors in their dorm rooms and the requirement to take a Covid-19 test on demand, oh, and most classes will be held remotely, anyway).
But the school says it has an option for students who are all about that campus life but who might not feel comfortable actually being on the state's largest public-university campus - its satellite campus 80 miles away in Newton. Read more.
For the second time, a federal court has ruled that Mt. Ida College owes students nothing for the way it suddenly shut down, not even those who were screwed because the closure didn't leave them enough time to find placement at a different school. Read more.
Simon announced today that Copley Place, the Shops at Chestnut Hill, South Shore Plaza and 11 other malls it owns in Massachusetts will close tonight and stay closed through at least March 29 due to Covid-19 concerns.
Artists' organizations in Newton, Lexington, and Somerville have all cancelled their Open Studios events that were scheduled for April and May weekends this year. Lexington's statement explains: Read more.
Newton Police announce that the city's annual winter ban on overnight parking, due to end on March 31, has been ended immediately.
As always please pay attention to other existing parking signage.
Nine Orthodox congregations in the Boston area are telling members they are shutting their buildings at 3 p.m. - and are urging congregants not to form minyans in people's homes, since that would defeat the goal of trying to keep people apart through social distancing. Read more.
A Newton resident with a child at the Horace Mann Elementary School has tested positive for Covid-19 and both are now self quarantining at home, School Superintendent David Fleishman told parents in e-mail tonight.
School will open as scheduled on Monday, Fleishman added: Read more.
The Chestnut Hill Wegmans was completely out of sanitizing wipes this morning - and a sign indicates they have little hope of getting more. But they did have plenty of bleach, Pledge and Windex.
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