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The causes and effects of the state’s housing crisis have not been covered as aggressively as they should be.
We are about to enter a new decade, but the more things change, the more they stay the same, especially when it comes to the news media.
And one of those things that never changes – and is frankly getting worse amid the meltdown in the business model that long supported the news – is the disconnect between the what’s covered in the local, regional and national media and the issues that actually matter to most of us.
Frankly, even in the last years before the collapse of the newspaper business in the 1980s and 1990s, things weren’t so hot in this regard.
There was too often a focus on narrow range of relatively superficial, niche issues, such as arcane political disputes or all–too–predictable issues pushed by various social activist groups, and a decline in investigative and enterprise reporting.
Sure, the internet has led to an explosion of online news sites, but most are trying to do too much with too few staff, as are our surviving newspapers.
Yet it’s not just about dwindling resources, it’s also about mindset. One determined and dedicated reporter can do more than a dozen lazy ones if set loose on big story or issue.
Here are some big stories that deserve far more coverage than they have been getting.
The Unexamined Housing Crisis
The Globe’s Spotlight team recently rolled out a great series on the region’s transportation crisis.
It’s a great example of an issue the Globe and other local and regional news organizations should have been all over years ago, but better late than never.
It’s hard to find a more elemental – and crucial – issue – than the increasing inability to get work and just about everywhere else without spending the equivalent of a 10-or-12-hour workday each week behind the wheel.
Now it’s time for the same in-depth, front page treatment of the housing crisis.
And that means focusing not on downtown Boston, but on the region’s sprawling suburbs, where restrictive zoning and a troubled racial history shape the current environment.
Most development reporting focuses on Boston, with plans for new towers obvious attention-getters, with the suburbs are treated as a sideshow at best.
Yet just over 667,000 people live in Boston proper, with the vast majority of the metro region’s 4.7 million living in the suburbs, from streetcar ’burbs like Watertown to outer towns like Hopkinton.
While the individual pieces of this sordid puzzle have gotten their share of scrutiny, what’s missing – and desperately needed – is a big–picture look at the whole. And that means looking at the responsibility for this mess, which arguably rests more with the state legislature.
Simple logic – and sheer numbers – indicates that if there is ever to be a solution to the housing crisis, the suburbs will have to lower their zoning walls and start doing their fair share.
Back in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, we were building a healthy number of new homes and apartments, with the Boston area and Massachusetts as a whole right in the middle of the pack, nationally.
Today, we are at the bottom, with many of the same suburban communities that once welcomed subdivisions of capes, ranches and colonials having pulled up the drawbridge with large-lot, 1-, 2- and even 3-acre zoning that all but guarantees the only thing that will get built are McMansions.
How did we get here, and, just as importantly, how do we get out of this mess?
There are some tough issues here to unravel. What part has racism played, and still plays, in the often-virulent resistance on part of local officials to multifamily housing, especially when it comes to projects that included subsidized units?
The Boston area is one of the most segregated housing markets in the country, with the suburbs some of the least diverse in the country.
While it’s not a product of some grand design, it didn’t happen by accident, either.
There was an exodus of white, middle-class families from Boston to the suburbs from the 1950s on. To what extent did these urban newcomers attempt to pull the ladder up behind them, deploying onerous zoning rules to block multifamily housing and keep others out?
State Police Col. Christopher Mason became the second commander of the troubled law enforcement agency in two years in November, amid ongoing fallout from a series of major scandals including alleged overtime abuse. State House News Service photo | Sam Doran
Dysfunctional State Government
The chronic problems at the MBTA and the RMV have put a dent in Gov. Charlie Baker’s “Mr. Fix it” image.
But unless you just arrived here yesterday from squeaky–clean Minneapolis, most of us know the real problem here is a dysfunctional state government.
The MBTA is a slow-motion train wreck, with rogue train operators – remember the runaway Red Line train a few years ago? – new trains that don’t work as advertised, and endless excuses and delays.
The RMV spent years letting dangerous drivers roam the roads because it couldn’t bother to open the mail, while the Probation Service was a vast patronage scheme for years.
And let’s not forget about the State Police overtime scam.
While the individual pieces of this sordid puzzle have gotten their share of scrutiny, what’s missing – and desperately needed – is a big–picture look at the whole.
And that means looking at the responsibility for this mess, which arguably rests more with the state legislature, for decades controlled by the Democrats, than with our string of Republican governors hamstrung by a weak state party.
The Skewed Health Care Debate
Much attention is paid to health care. But the focus is often obsessively on access, which, while important, doesn’t address the concerns of the vast majority of people out there.
Most of us have access to health care – the problem is it costs too damn much, and, if one is unlucky enough to wind up in the emergency room, the potential lurks for financial ruin or bankruptcy.
What’s driving these extraordinary health care cost increases, year after year after year?
The Boston area, which is massive medical–industrial complex would be a good place for an enterprising news organization to begin seeking these answers.
Massachusetts has some of the highest health care costs in the country. We rank near the top in terms of access, prevention and treatment, but a not-so-hot 31 in terms of “avoidable hospital use and cost,” according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Our Increasingly Unaffordable Colleges
Higher education is a major employer in the Boston area.
Yet to follow local coverage of higher ed, you would think Harvard is the only school in town.
There are dozens of colleges and universities out there in the Boston area, including a large and successful public university system, which apparently only warrants coverage when UMass Boston goes over its construction budget or students at UMass Amherst riot.
And, like our major health care institutions, both our private and public colleges relentlessly raise tuition and other fees year after year after year, with little if any serious attention.
There are now more than 13 local colleges and universities that are now charging more than $70,000.
It’s high time for a serious look at what’s driving these crazy cost increases and what can be done to rein them in.
Do institutions like Harvard, with multibillion-dollar endowments, still deserve tax-exempt nonprofit status?
Scott Van Voorhis
Have fabulously wealthy organizations like Harvard – or, for that matter, Partners, the big Boston hospital group – ceased to truly be public charities and have become just another form of rapacious corporate operators?
OK, you get the idea. There are a million stories out there that are not being covered, and it’s a shame they aren’t.
I’d love to hear from you, though. What stories would you like to see covered? What issues do you see falling through the cracks?
Fire away!
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
