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| ⛅ Mostly cloudy, with a high near 54 and rain likely at night. |
Last night, nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital reached a last-minute deal with hospital officials to avert a second strike that was planned to begin today. WBUR's Priyanka Dayal McCluskey has more here on the tentative contract agreement, which still needs to be voted on. Report card day: Last fall, in its annual report card on Greater Boston's housing market, the think tank Boston Indicators celebrated the region's recent progress on much-need home construction. But it also warned that permitting data suggested a slowdown was on the horizon. It appears that slowdown has arrived. Boston Indicators released its latest housing report card this week , showing the number of new housing units being added in Greater Boston was down by nearly 50% over the past year. Luc Schuster, the executive director of Boston Indicators, said that state policy changes have helped at the margins, but not enough to close the gap. " The challenge is prices have leveled off at a very high level," Shuster told WBUR's John Bender. Here's a look at the report card, by the numbers: - 15,241: The number of net new housing units in Greater Boston between July 2025 and July 2026. That's down from 29,024 during the previous 12 months, a spike that Boston Indicators says was in part due to larger apartment projects that stalled during the pandemic finally opening.
- 6: The number of Greater Boston communities with median single-family home prices below $500,000 this year. Adjusting for inflation, that's still down 42% over the last decade, according to the report.
- $181,000: The household income required to purchase an entry-level home in one of those "low-priced" Greater Boston communities (if the household doesn't spend more than 30% of its income on housing, among other assumptions). The report estimated that just one in six renters in those communities make that much.
- 4: The number of Greater Boston communities where the median-single family home values are above $2 million. Cambridge joined Wellesley, Weston and Brookline in that group this year. " For homeowners, high prices have meant increasing values of their homes," Schuster said. "Their net worth, in many cases, has increased significantly over the last decade. But for renters, it's become really hard to make that jump from renting into homeownership."
- 48%: The percentage of Greater Boston renters who are considered cost-burdened (i.e. they pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs).
- 24%: The percentage of "severely" cost-burdened renters paying more than 50% on housing costs. According to the report, that rate has more than doubled over the past decade among renters making $35,000 to $75,000 a year.
On the trail: The 2027 campaigns are already heating up. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's biggest critic on the City Council officially has a challenger in next year's municipal election. WBUR's Eve Zuckoffs reports that Rachel Pearson, a South Boston substitute teacher and community organizer, plans to run against Councilor Ed Flynn for the District 2 seat covering South Boston, Chinatown and parts of the South End. According to The Boston Globe, Pearson plans to launch her campaign tonight at a pub in Southie. - State filings show Pearson has donated over $1,000 to Wu's campaign in recent years and, for what it's worth, counts the mayor as a follower on Instagram. Pearson told the Globe that she spoke to Wu about challenging Flynn, but declined to say if she's seeking her endorsement (though Wu is known to back challengers to a political foe or two).
- For his part, Flynn — the son of former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn — has nearly $1 million in his campaign account, an unusually large amount for a city councilor.
Flocking back: The Lowell City Council has quietly moved to reinstate Flock cameras. Recently released minutes from the council's Oct. 6 executive session show councilors voted 8-1 to turn back on the city's 47 Flock cameras. The turnabout comes after hearing from local police leaders about how the system is used and the "many safeguards" that are in place. The cameras had been off since Lowell City Council narrowly voted to suspend the AI-assisted license plate readers in September. P.S.— Some parts of Massachusetts could catch our first snow of the season, thanks to a chilly nor'easter sweeping in late tonight. For the Boston area, it will mostly mean a cold, rainy Friday. But according to the National Weather Service, the Berkshires and higher elevation areas of central Massachusetts could get a coating of snow, while most of northern New England is likely to get an inch or two. |
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In a state that hasn't had a Democrat in office since 1980 and hasn't sent a Black Senator to Washington since the 1870s, Colom's win represents a massive upset in state politics. Colom narrowly defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, according to a race call by The Associated Press on Wednesday evening. Hyde-Smith conceded defeat shortly after the call. Read more. |
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Nine members of the Kennedy family have joined the legal fight against Trump's D.C. arch, arguing it would disrupt views and cast shadows over their ancestors' graves at Arlington National Cemetery. Read more. |
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The DOJ moved to dismiss criminal convictions of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and of the Oath Keepers, in what it calls "the interests of justice." Critics are crying foul. Read more. |
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In a letter dated Monday, the bipartisan group of governors said the additional funding is "urgently needed" and would bring total Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding to $7 billion. Read more. |
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In a 2023 campaign speech, Trump pledged to reclaim universities from what he called the radical left. His Education Department just finalized a rule to help him do it. Read more.
excerpt: Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.
The Trump administration has made many changes to education policy that are hard to miss: cutting the U.S. Education Department's workforce by roughly half, canceling research funding, uprooting special education staff, upending student civil rights protections, overhauling student loan repayment plans, scaling back graduate school loans — the list goes on. But the latest change — one President Donald Trump has called his "secret weapon" — has gone largely unnoticed, even as it's set to take effect in July. That's because it's hidden inside one singularly boring word: Accreditation. "The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left," Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. "Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system." Specifically, he pledged to overhaul it — a notably wonky threat from a politician who usually disdains wonkery. Now, the Education Department has kept Trump's promise.
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- Laura McTaggart says Veterans Day is a time when she often connects with old shipmates and fellow veterans. "No matter where we served or what we did, we’re all proud of our time in uniform," she writes in this Cognoscenti commentary. "Fast-forward to 2026, and a lot has changed. Today’s sailors, soldiers and airmen — tomorrow’s veterans — are rightfully proud of their work, but I wonder if they will be once the smoke has cleared and history judges some of this administration’s decisions and actions."
- For the first time in months, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline has dipped below $4. But don't chalk it up to the election. Experts say the reason is more mundane.
- The world's fastest ocean liner was intentionally sunk off the coast of Florida on Wednesday to set a new record: the world's largest artificial reef.
- “I Play Rocky" is a movie about the making of “Rocky,” done in the style of a “Rocky” movie. Our film critic Sean Burns is not a fan. "Timed to draft off the original picture’s semicentennial, it’s a phony, frictionless pile of content paste," he writes in this review.
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Hope Truwit bakes her signature chocolate chip cookies, along with other sugary fare, out of her Harvard Square apartment. Read more. |
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