In the past year or two, Boston has been able to rebound from the Great Recession. Construction cranes have been rising around the city and investment has flowed into various commercial, residential and mixed-use projects around town – from smaller developments, like the recently opened Kensington apartment tower, to gargantuan ones that seek to remake entire neighborhoods, like Seaport Square and the Government Center Garage tower.
The housing recovery – new and existing home sales nationally have been rising steadily since the recession ended – has been good news for a city and region that experienced little new growth during the recession. New housing permits across Greater Boston are also on the rebound – 8,000 were issued in 2012 and more than 11,000 are forecast for 2013. But it’s not all good news.
The recent release of the Greater Boston Housing Report Card makes it clear that there’s a lot more work to be done. A few issues are sure to put a kink in the recovery we’ve all witnessed, most notably higher interest rates, the stagnating jobs market and the rising cost of living.
According to the report, since 2005 the overall cost of living in Greater Boston – including the cost of housing, health care, transportation, child care, other necessities and taxes for working families with children – has increased twice as fast as median homeowner household income and three times faster than the median income of renter households.
What does this all mean? It means that it’s getting really expensive to live in Greater Boston, especially for people who aren’t capable of forking over a lot of cash for a small condo or house.
And the answer to the problem seems to be the same one that we’ve all been discussing: creating more supply. But it’s not only a good supply of not-too-expensive housing that’s needed; it’s a good supply of good-paying jobs, as well.
The Rise Of Square
Last week, something big happened in the world of mobile banking: Square, a firm founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, unveiled its Square Cash technology.
Normally, the release of mobile payments software is a blip on the radar, but Square challenged the payments world to think differently.
Square Cash, which utilizes email to send cash between two people who have debit cards, is getting buzz because it’s easy to use. Say you want to send cash to a friend or relative – all you have to do is compose an email to that person, copy cash@square.com and write the dollar amount in the subject line. After receiving a one-time email from Square to set up an account, the money is sent to the recipient (who then has to fill out a form to link Square to their debit card).
Square isn’t the first company to take advantage of email. Google Wallet has done this before, but Square might be the most streamlined.
Whether banks, which can sometimes be slow to adapt to new technology, will adopt the technology is still a big question. But the more new technology is tested and approved for use on the consumer side, the better consumers are off in the long run.
