A screenshot from Josh Kraft's video announcing his 2025 run for Boston mayor. Photo courtesy of the Kraft Campaign

With Mayor Michelle Wu planning to seek reelection, Josh Kraft, who has been weighing a run and has already set up a campaign account, will hold an 11 a.m. event Tuesday in Dorchester to declare his candidacy.

Along with a media advisory for the Tuesday event, Kraft campaign consultancy Keyser Public Strategies released an announcement video featuring Kraft’s first public pitch to voters. Around 10 a.m. Tuesday, however the video was made private.

The video begins with Isidra Quinones, who says Kraft could have gone into his family business – his father is New England Patriots and Kraft Group owner Robert Kraft – but “rather than that he chose a life of service” by working at the South Boston Boys and Girls Club in 1990 and later at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston.

“There’s a saying we had at the Boys and Girls Glub,” Kraft, a Democrat, says in the video. “I care. I care that Boston is heading in the wrong direction. I care that our region continues to leave many people behind. I care that middle class families are squeezed by the cost of housing, and I care that City Hall puts politics and ideology ahead of impact. That’s why I’m running for mayor of Boston.”

The video, like many campaign kick-offs, is generally short on deteailed policy proposals or specific political promises, but Kraft’s narration makes clear his campaign plans to focus on housing production.

“My number-one priority is to lower the cost of housing by building more housing. Boston ranks near the bottom of all cities in America when it comes to housing starts. we have to do better,” he says in the video.

Related: In Campaign Launch, Kraft Pitches Rent Control

Kraft’s video also takes a veiled swipe at Wu’s development policies, saying “I care that City Hall puts politics and ideology ahead of impact.”

Experts and industry leaders generally agree that high interest rates and construction costs have been the principal reason housing production in Boston ground to a halt over the last two years. But many developers complain that Wu’s push for progressive priorities has added extra costs that prevented potentially workable housing developments from breaking ground.

Industry figures typically single out the mayor’s 2023 push to bring a mild form of rent control to Boston for driving away potential investors, along with her push for greater affordable housing set-asides in new buildings, higher development fees and a push to require new buildings be carbon-neutral, along with the state’s new, stringent and costly “stretch energy code.”

Despite a big drop-off in building permits issued for new housing during Wu’s tenure, Kraft may not have a straightforward case to prosecute against the mayor. Wu has in the past publicly countered the criticism her policies have stymied housing production by pointing to a range of reforms.

Under Wu, Boston has launched the citywide Squares + Streets upzoning initiative, plus similar upzoning plans in Mattapan, East Boston and Charlestown, along with her administration’s pending efforts to simplify and standardize the city’s development approvals process and reform the city Inspectional Services Department to let it deliver building permits faster. She also recently launched a $110 million housing investment fund that’s intended to help developments close financing gaps, and new planning chief Kairos Shen surprised downtown advocates last month by proposing to allow significantly more height in areas of troubled class B office buildings downtown.

And the Boston Planning & Development Agency board has generally kept up a steady drumbeat of development approvals, OK’ing 2,647 net new housing units in 2022, 7,389 in 2023 and 3,575 in 2024.

State House News Service contributed to this report.

Kraft’s Mayoral Launch Video Zeros in on Housing Production

by James Sanna time to read: 2 min
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