In Chinatown, the brand new International Hostel building charges as low $55/night for an overnight stay. The package includes Free breakfast and Wifi.
The International Hostel in Chinatown competes with the 40 Berkley Street building to rent hi-quality rooms for the cheapest possible prices. And because international tourists and students travel to Boston in fewer number until Spring, their rates are lower today.
“Affordable housing” is not a house. It is a concept put forth by economists and housing policy makers who prescribe that you Should be Spending 30% of your income and no more, on ALL your monthly HOUSING COSTS!
“All” means your share of the rent or mortgage plus insurance, taxes, condo fees if any and heating cost. A web site compares cities and determined what it takes to buy a house there. In hot Atlanta, which has emerged as a significant Black Hollywood movie making town, you need to make $45,000 a year to get a mortgage that buys a decent house.
In Boston, you need to make $98,000 a year to do that, according to the survey results from www.hsh.com
I can relate to that. When I had an Atlanta apartment near the Strip and Piedmont Park, rent was $125/mo. I moved on up to Buckhead. That apt had more space, was in a safer neighborhood and cost a tiny bit more. I left Atlanta, lived in DC, and eventually moved to Boston. Washington DC Dupont Circle was 30% less rent than an equivalent unit at 220 Jamaicaway Boston. But Boston cost triple my Atlanta rent rate at the time. Actually, it still does!
Fifty-three thousand new housing units are needed in Boston between now and the year 2025 to accommodate the increase in population being estimated. Boston has an estimated 634,000 residents today. The city is expected to have 700,000 residents in it soon.
A commenter on the Houston Hurricane said you can’t concrete over everything because the water needs a place to go when it builds up. That’s a lesson to be learned. All new high rise development is doing that to the surrounding streets, in my opinion.
To quants: Check out this data from MAPC, the Metropolian Area Planning Council HQ Boston. MAPC estimites more than 400,000 new housing units — mostly multifamily, and mostly in urban areas–will be needed by the year 2040 in Metro Boston.web site
Winners are emerging in affordable housing lottery.
Draw a Black line around the Jackson Square Jamaica Plain area to a part of the South End, and from there into Uphams Corner and you would have encircled more than 100 reduced rent new apartments being offered to people seeking affordable housing income restricted rents in Boston recently.
The demand for a shaved rent or mortgage deal is constant. It took a while for the City of Boston to kick into fairly high gear getting the word out about them. They probably have over 100,000 people on an email list getting the clicks when there is something to announce. We told you about their web site, right?
Now HousingWorks.net – does a good job getting subsidized offers out to people. HW covers the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Housingworks doesn’t work direct with renters. No, they train advocates who in turn have access to an automated system that if you personally use it through an advocate, you can place one HousingWorks application into the System and have it automatically add your name to wait list at subsidized locations across the state. Imagine that. One click and you go Poof! onto the waiting list of 10 units without licking a stamp.
These application opportunities require luck and patience for most. Of course, there are lottery offer situations where your special condition, age, or circumstance gets your number bumped up higher on the list than another persons. PREFERENCES are at work here.
It is all about the numbers.
Talked to a guy the day the Tall Ships were in town. He works at a Capital One coffee shop. He entered a lottery in Chelsea for one of a limited number of condos in a particular building. He won! There were 83 applicants in that resale contest. I think he told me 11 were winners.
See there you have it. Anyone can be a winner.
And who among us wouldn’t clap for a barista to win.
The chart shows maximum allowable rents and purchase prices for affordable property. If your current housing cost is 30 to 35% of your monthly income you have affordable housing already.
The AMI or area median income is $68,000 per person per year. When income is less than 100% AMI see the reduction in prices to pay. Section 8 and other subsidies reduces the income requirement further.
On mobile screens click and slide the chart to make it larger.
You need an application to enter a housing lottery. Sign-up for our lottery update by email service.
The $163,000 One Thousand Square Foot CONDO here is in Hyde Park. Its available for certified artists.
Smallwall.net has posted the application for artists who wish to qualify for extremely low rent, high quality studio space and lofts that are under the price regulation of the Boston Development and Planning Authority aka BRA.
Most private companies won’t air their financial laundry in public. But the Government will and they have.
The diversity supplier marketplace exists for two reasons. 1) government regulations. 2) the marketplace demands diversity.
The Massachusetts state Supplier Diversity Office recorded $991,590,145 in total Commonwealth spending attributed to its Supplier Diversity Office targeted minority business sector in FY2014 ( certified as MBEs, WBEs and SBPP goods, services and construction.)
Minority MBEs ( minority business enterprises ) sold $247,150,817 to the state. An amount of $574,818,148 was sold by Women Business Enterprise (WBE) to the state. Another $16,263,222 went to MBE’s in direct construction related contracts from state buyers and $12,411,914 went to WBEs or white women owned companies in direct construction related contracts from state buyers.
Boston Mayor Walsh has hired a Diversity Chief to oversee where his tight $2.2B a year is going.
Firms owned by white women who apply for the state WBE SDO designation are being classified as certified WBE minority enterprises when approved. Other minorities are given MBE or M/WBE status.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission licensed vendor designation is a new group classifications for a business because the state has never had licensed casinos before. In the beginning, this new industry segment is pumping a collective $250 million per year into minority-owned firms.
You won’t be able to do much business with a casino in Massachusetts unless you get a license as a vendor from the gaming commissioners.
The Boston MBDA Minority Business Development Agency has helped position minority companies with large federal source awards.
Early Morning Software has a DBE activity monitoring software product it sells to corporate and government procurement departments. $36 Billion annually is the US market size for diversity spend by these corporations that have to track it.
When the local MBTA agency buys product from a vendor, anything over $25,000 is bidded out but when its less, they choose to buy from vendors in the system. Companies should be certified DBE ( over $1 mil a year in sales ) to get the big bucks from the T.
The KEOLIS transportation company runs locomotives over Massachusetts commuter rail lines. Its Manager of Purchasing and Materials in concert with the KEOLIS Director of DBE,EEO and Diversity intends to award 17% of its annual direct spend to the best minority DBE,WBE,MBE and SDVOB certified suppliers it can source if the incumbent purchasing managers release their grip on controls they hold close due to the hostile takeover by KEOLIS.
The Diversity SmartTrack online Massachusetts web site tracks 14,000 purchase orders flowing to and from buyers to minority vendors.
The City of Boston’s Economic Chief John Barros is working on splitting up a $1.8 billion capital budget for contract procurement into smaller sizes in the $100K range so that smaller companies have a better chance on winning some awards. The city’s total budget is over $20 billion dollars.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission publicizes these diversity spend numbers:
Penn National Gaming is opening a slots casino in Massachusetts and MGM is opening a casino in Springfield Massachusetts. MGM set a goal of $50 million per year budgeted for minority businesses. Penn will be spending millions on minority businesses too.
WYNN is opening a casino near Boston Massachusetts. A DBE goal of 15% and up to $120 million per year has been set by Wynn for doing business with minorities.
The money casinos bring to the table are in addition to the ambitious goals for minority business inclusion regional institutions such as the Boston Red Sox, Harvard University, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Raytheon, Bank of America and others have been working with for quite some time.
The Boston Minority Business Market size is sharply up over years past. It probably has surpassed minority spending levels the Big Dig Tunnel era claimed.
Chinatown/South End Collaborative launched an effort last year to increase local and minority hiring at new retail stores in the neighborhood. Led by the Chinese Progressive Association, the effort included the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Castle Square Tenants Organization, Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, Massachusetts Worker Education Roundtable and BEST Corp. In total, 108 new hires were made with 64% living in the City of Boston with 19% living in the Chinatown and South End area. The new hires are also particularly diverse with 75% of them being people of color. Asian Americans are 26% of new hires.
This publisher owned a media marketing company named Big Dug Media Marketing with Xiaoqing Cao. Eventually, BigDug.co.uk bought our bigdug.com web site domain name for a price we couldn’t refuse, but for three years, we worked on a number of public awareness projects and one of those was related to the development of The Big Dig I-90 and I-93 Depressed Central Artery Tunnel System near Boston Chinatown. Here’s a video story from 2007..
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