In Vienna, well-maintained public housing complexes are distributed across the city’s neighborhoods and come with amenities like gyms, schools, and even shopping centers. Far from being places to avoid, these complexes housed more than 60 percent of the city’s 1.8 million residents in 2022.
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An example of Vienna’s abundant “social housing,” which is owned by the city or collectives of residents.Bwag
The Viennese call such housing“social,” to reflect its broad usage — nearly 75 percent of the city’s residents qualify for it. This means that a supermarket cashier and a software developer can be neighbors, with each paying less than 30 percent of their income in rent. In Boston, only households making 80 percent or less of the city’s median income are eligible for Boston’s scant 17 percent of subsidized housing.
Vienna-style housing in America: Dream or delusion?
When I returned home and breathlessly told my friends and colleagues about Vienna’s successful approach to public housing, I saw apprehension in their faces and got tepid responses. They seemed concerned, the way you might be for someone who’d clearly gone down a rabbit hole of delusion. On a couple of occasions, people expressed their skepticism. “Yeah, that all sounds really nice,” they’d begin. “But dude, that’s never gonna happen in America. Come on.”
Recent history is on their side. Greater Boston rent prices shot even higher into the stratosphere during the second year of the pandemic. The idea of bringing Vienna-style social housing here just seemed increasingly fanciful. But around that time, I noticed something that gave me hope. More journalists than ever were going to Vienna to write about its excellent public housing system, and US policy makers were taking note, too.
These Vienna stories heralded optimism. “Lessons From a Renters’ Utopia,” a headline in The New York Times offered. “How Vienna became the world’s most livable city,” the Guardian gushed. And as an explainer for Shelterforce, a nonprofit publication dedicated to reporting on affordable housing, Hawaii state Senator Stanley Chang and San Francisco assembly member Alex Lee published “How We Can Bring Vienna’s Housing Model to the US.”
Now, after years of affordable housing scarcity and a pessimistic outlook on what solutions are possible, it seems that more lawmakers are willing to think big about housing policy.
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In September, Mayor Michelle Wu announced that the city would commit $100 million to a Housing Accelerator Fund, a reserve for kickstarting new housing projects that have run into financing obstacles. The housing accelerator will make it possible for the city to start acting like a real estate investor and directly subsidize public and private housing developments with infusions of cash.
The fund also presents an opportunity for Boston to finance modern, mixed-income public housing like the kind I saw in Vienna. One outspoken supporter of the idea is Boston City Councilor at Large Henry Santana, who spent his childhood in the Boston Housing Authority’s Alice Taylor Apartments in Mission Hill.
“Public housing gave my family a foundation with which to thrive,” Santana said on Oct. 17 at a working group session at Boston City Hall where councilors discussed mixed-income social housing. “I’m passionate about this kind of housing because it can help break down racial and social divides which have shaped our neighborhoods,” Santana added.
Henry Santana of the Boston City Council at the Alice H. Taylor Apartments, where he grew up. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
But as I took my seat on the sidelines of the meeting room beneath a portrait of James Michael Curley — whose last mayoral term coincided with the start of the “urban renewal” era that saw millions of public housing units razed in Boston — the guests I was most interested in hearing from were officials from Maryland’s Montgomery County. Thanks to them, we no longer have to talk about mixed-income social housing solely as a Viennese import.
Maryland is leading the way on social housing
In Montgomery County, modern, dignified social housing for a wide spectrum of incomes is becoming part of a new normal.
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With its own fund, the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County (HOC) hired developers to build The Laureate, a 268-unit complex in Rockville with public transit access, a pool, and a gym. A quarter of the apartments are set aside for households making less than 50 percent of the area’s median income — about $76,450 or less for a family of four.
The building is fully owned by the city, setting it apart from most affordable housing projects, in which a fixed number of below-market apartments are baked into a building plan with the help of low-income housing tax credits. In Montgomery County, it’s as if policymakers asked, “What if we got into the business of housing development ourselves?”
The HOC works because it is a revolving fund, meaning the HOC lends developers housing accelerator money to fund the construction of a building, with substantially lower interest rates than they would get from private lenders. Once the building’s units have been leased to tenants, the HOC refinances the project, takes a majority stake in the project to establish municipal ownership, and pays itself back for the initial loan. With the housing funds replenished and the HOC having collected interest from the developers, the HOC is better able to fund more mixed-income public housing. Montgomery County Council member Andrew Friedson says, “The Montgomery County housing fund started with $50 million and now it’s $100 million. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to create housing.”
With that formula for financing mixed-income social housing, more cities and states are warming to the idea. City officials in Atlanta and state officials in Rhode Island have announced plans to form their own public development bodies, and Boston’s housing accelerator fund is a step in the same direction.
On Nov. 19, Mayor Wu announced that the first local project to receive housing accelerator financing will be Bunker Hill Housing, the Boston Housing Authority housing complex in Charlestown. A public-private partnership between the BHA and Bunker Hill Redevelopment Company, the project will result in 15 new residential buildings with a total of 2,699 apartments. More than 1,000 of these apartments — about the same number that made up the original complex at Bunker Hill — will remain deeply affordable, meaning their occupants will spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing regardless of their income. But apartments in the old complex were exclusively available to low-income renters, while the new buildings willhave a mix of rents, including for market-rate units.
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A view of the Bunker Hill housing project in Charlestown in 2022.Jim Davis/Globe Staff
Santana thinks this approach will yield dividends for the community. “In the United States, public housing has been traditionally viewed as this last resort for low-income families,” Santana says. “The stigma of public housing is tied to disinvestment and neglect. When you drive across the city and you pass a public housing structure, you know it’s public housing.”
Does Santana see a substantive difference between the terms “public housing” and “social housing”? “I think that ‘social housing’ reflects the philosophy that housing really should be a collective responsibility,” Santana says. “The term helps us reposition housing as a public good, rather than a commodity.”
Although that may be a tough sales pitch, Santana believes people are becoming more open to bolder interventions. “What I’m hearing constituents asking for, in all Boston neighborhoods, are options that provide stability; not just temporary fixes,” Santana says.
Today, when you arrive at 55 Bunker Hill Street — where the old BHA complex still exists, waiting to be knocked down, reimagined, and rebuilt — you’ll see a bunch of two- and three-story brick buildings that have clearly seen better days. They are weathered, their design dated and dour. The demarcation is clear: This is public housing, and that — the freshly painted buildings across the street — is private housing. But now, with the housing accelerator fund catalyzing an overdue renovation and expansion of the BHA property, that line is about to blur.
If Boston’s housing accelerator makes more projects like the Bunker Hill redevelopment possible, we might have a tougher time spotting the difference.
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Miles Howard is a freelance writer in Boston and the founder of the Walking City Trail. He publishes the weekly hiking newsletter Mind the Moss.
As tensions remain high in the Middle East, travel continues to be impacted across the globe.
Flights to and from the Middle East keep getting canceled at Boston Logan International Airport, and there were no signs of improvement Sunday as Americans are left scrambling to get to safety. The Trump administration has promised to help but getting out isn’t easy.
Several flights from Dubai to Boston were canceled Sunday, and aviation experts say about 3,000 seats per day go through Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Without them, people are trying to get home through Europe or Asia.
When not in use by the team during the NFL season, the Patriots team plane is operated by a charter company for various flights.
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Meanwhile, Iran’s busiest airport was hit by strikes with Israel later saying it was being used to transfer weapons to regime allies in the region.
The Iranian foreign minister spoke on Meet the Press Sunday about what it would take to agree to a ceasefire and ultimately end the war.
“Nobody wants to continue this war. This is not our war. This is not a war of our choice. This is imposed on us by the United States, by Israelis…” Abbas Araghchi said. “People have been killed. Places have been destroyed and now they want to ask for a ceasefire again? This doesn’t work like this.”
With no clear end to this conflict and airlines backed up as it is, experts say it will take a while to get people where they need to go, though the State Department says it has chartered many flights to bring Americans home, including chartering the Patriots plane.
The Iranian strike on Bahrain came after Tehran accused the US of hitting one of its desalination plants. Persian Gulf countries relay on the civilian infrastructure for most of their fresh drinking water, and sustained attacks could compound the impact of a war that’s already rattled the stability of financial hubs in the region.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said he had instructed the military not to attack any nation that isn’t striking the Islamic Republic and apologized to neighboring countries. Trump said the remarks amounted to a surrender, but Tehran pressed ahead with strikes.
“When the enemy attacks us from bases in the region, we respond and will continue to respond. That’s our right and it’s a standing policy,” Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on state television on Saturday. “Countries in the region must either prevent the US from using their territory against Iran themselves, or we will.”
The Iranian president’s comments drew domestic anger, prompting speculation of a rift between him and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which coordinates Iran’s missile program and regional militia alliances, according to Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute.
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On Sunday, Pezeshkian said Iran’s adversaries had drawn “naive conclusions” from his earlier remarks, adding Tehran is “compelled” to respond to aggression carried out from other countries.
Iran’s armed forces have the capacity to sustain at least six months of high-intensity war at the current pace and will start using more advanced, rarely-used long-range missiles in coming days, state news agency IRIB said Sunday, citing the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Trump said on Saturday that the US will consider striking areas and groups of people in Iran that weren’t previously considered targets.
Israeli jets targeted Iranian oil depots in the Kuhak and Shahran areas of Tehran as well as the nearby city of Karaj, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen separately said targets including oil refineries and power stations were on the table and acknowledged an escalation in attacks.
Explosions were heard in parts of the city, where authorities urged residents to wear face masks and stay indoors, citing the air pollution risks from the debris clouds.
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The semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported that the Red Crescent had warned the explosion of fuel-storage tanks had released massive amounts of hazardous particles into the atmosphere.
The UAE, which pumped more than 3.5 million barrels a day as OPEC’s third-biggest producer in January, started cutting oil production at its offshore fields. Kuwait, OPEC’s fifth-biggest producer, reduced crude oil and refinery production, citing the “ongoing aggression” by Iran.
The Trump administration pushed back against worries around surging energy costs as a result of the war, with US gasoline prices rising to the highest since September 2024. US crude futures ended the week above $90 a barrel — more than $20 higher than last Friday — and notched the biggest weekly percentage gain on record in data going back to the 1980s.
Shares of Saudi Aramco climb as much as 4.9% on Sunday, the most in nearly three years.
Bahrain said three people were injured after shrapnel from intercepted missiles fell on the country. Separately, a water desalination plant in the country was damaged by an Iranian drone attack but water supplies remain unaffected, Bahrain said on Sunday.
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Saudi Arabia intercepted a drone heading toward its Shaybah oil field, three others east of the capital Riyadh and shot down three more in the city. Defense forces thwarted an attempt on the Diplomatic Quarter, where the US embassy is located, in the first confirmed targeting of the area since early last week.
At least one person was killed in Dubai due to “debris from an aerial interception,” the emirate said.
UAE President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan made a rare public appearance to warn Iran to stop attacking it. “The UAE has thick skin and bitter flesh — we are no easy prey,” he said.
Australia is assessing a request from Gulf nations for defensive military support to protect them against Iranian drone and missile attacks, but declined to say what it might provide.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday there would have to be a “very good reason” for the US to deploy ground troops to Iran, adding that Iranian forces would likely have to be so decimated they wouldn’t be able to resist. The US president also said he had ruled out the idea of armed Kurdish forces entering Iran to join the fight.
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Trump added the war would continue “for a little while” and oil prices would come back down.
China, which is a significant buyer of Iranian oil, has called for a ceasefire. But Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday signaled that Beijing won’t allow the conflict to affect its relationship with Washington ahead of a planned meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The war began after the US and Israel struck the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28,and more than a dozen countries have been sucked into the fray. Iran has so far reported 1,332 deaths, alongside widespread destruction. Scores of others were killed elsewhere in the region, while six US service members have lost their lives.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts elected the country’s next supreme leader, the semi‑official Mehr news agency said citing council member Ahmad Alamolhoda, without providing a name. He replaces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed on the first day of the conflict. Mojtaba Khamenei, the slain leader’s second-oldest son, was viewed as being a possible pick.
Airlines remain hamstrung by the conflict, with the number of canceled flights to Middle East hubs surpassing 27,000 since fighting began. Thousands of passengers remained stranded in the Gulf region, although on Friday Emirates said it’s aiming for a return to full network operations in coming days.
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–With assistance from Onur Ant, Shamim Adam, Dan Williams, Neil Munshi, Patrick Sykes, Christine Burke, Dana Khraiche and Leen Al-Rashdan.
BOSTON (WHDH) – Police are investigating a shooting in Dorchester on Saturday afternoon that left a person hospitalized, officials said.
Officers responding to a reported shooting in the area of 480 Quincy St. around 3 p.m. found a person suffering from a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, according to Boston police. The person was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for their injuries.
Ballistic evidence was recovered nearby in the area of Coleman Street.
No arrests have been made.
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No additional information was immediately available.
This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
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