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Boston, MA
Forever renters: For many in Greater Boston, the American dream of homeownership ‘no longer exists’ – The Boston Globe
Harnois is an elementary school teacher in Boston Public Schools; together she and her husband make $175,000 a year. And their monthly rental costs are modest, considerably less than the typical household around here.
“If homes here cost $400,000, we’d be homeowners,” said Harnois, who is 32.
Such is reality now for Greater Boston’s next generation, particularly younger and middle class people.
The cost of buying a home has been steadily rising for decades, and recently it has exploded, growing far faster than incomes.
The typical house in Greater Boston sold for $833,900 in the second quarter of 2025, more than 7.5 times the region’s median household income. Five years ago, a household needed to earn $126,519 a year to afford the median-priced single-family home in this region, according to an analysis by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Today, that figure has more than doubled, to $259,648.
The result is people who 20, 10, or even 5 years ago would have been able to purchase a home — teachers, nurses, and academics — can hardly even conceive of it.
“The door to homeownership in the Boston area has really been shut,” said Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard’s housing studies center. “There are hundreds of thousands of people here staring at these numbers saying, ‘Who can actually afford this?’ ”
The consequences are being felt by an entire generation, forced to make a choice their parents did not: Stay in Massachusetts, and rent forever, or leave, and put down roots somewhere less expensive.
“We work really hard, and we feel like we’ve done everything right,” said Harnois. “It is difficult to accept that there is no pathway for us to own a home in the neighborhood I’ve spent my whole life in.”
Since the 1940s, when the 30-year mortgage emerged and made home buying more accessible to many workers, owning a home has been a symbol of success. To achieve the American dream was to work hard, save up, and buy a house, which would serve as both a stable home and a valuable asset that would appreciate with time. For many working class families in Massachusetts, homeownership was the ticket to the middle class.
It was exactly that path that Ben Watts hoped to follow.
Growing up, Watts’s parents did not own their home, a fact he became aware of when he visited friends’ houses as a kid. As he got older, he came to assume that he, someday, would.
“It was ingrained,” said Watts. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”
Now his goal has collided with economic reality. Watts, who is 33, works three jobs — as a bartender and for a French spirits company — and earns nearly $90,000 a year. His rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Belmont, which he splits with his fiancé, is $2,850.
Watts has effectively given up on owning a home. He can hardly find any listings on Zillow for less than $700,000, at least not ones that look like they wouldn’t require tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance. At that cost, Watts would be more than doubling his monthly housing payment, and likely paying at least half of his income toward a mortgage. And that’s after a six-figure down payment, cash he simply does not have.
The prevailing feeling, he said, is resentment.
“I’m being priced out because I’m working to try and make the city that I love better with great bars and restaurants,” said Watts, who grew up in Arlington. “It feels like I’m being told that there’s no place for me here anymore.”
Perhaps what is most frustrating to people like Watts: They know it wasn’t always like this.
Home prices have been on the rise for decades. But the biggest shift in housing affordability began in the aftermath of the pandemic, as home prices rose even faster, and mortgage rates more than doubled, leaving prospective buyers to pay both sky-high total price tags and huge monthly payments.
In 2010, for example, the median home price was $360,800, but the average on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.75 percent, meaning the mortgage payment on that median-priced house was only $1,816 a month, almost the same as it was in 2000. Now, with a median house price of $833,900, and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage around 6.79 percent in the second quarter of the year, the monthly mortgage payment on that median-priced house is $5,240 a month — before homeowners insurance, property tax, and mortgage insurance, which can tack on $1,500 more each month.
The shift is pricing a startling number of would-be homeowners out of the market. Roughly 100,000 people who made enough money to afford an entry-level home in 2021 could no longer afford that home in 2025, according to data from Boston Indicators.
“Tell me how many people can afford to buy an almost million dollar single-family home?” said Gail Latimore, executive director of the Codman Square Community Development Corporation. “Tell me how many people can afford to buy an $800,000 house and pay $5,000 a month for the mortgage? We’ve always been an expensive area, but this is unmanageable.”
What happens when so many people are priced out of homeownership all at once?
Right now, a generational wealth divide is emerging, said Albert Saiz, an associate professor of urban economics and real estate at MIT.
While 50 years ago, nearly half of young adults age 25 to 34 in Massachusetts owned a home, today barely one-third do, and a recent analysis by Boston Indicators suggests the true rate is even lower, roughly 24 percent. Those people who were able to buy in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s have seen their investments turn into a launching pad for generational wealth: Those homes, in many cases, are now million-dollar nest eggs that have double or tripled in value, particularly in Boston and its suburbs.
“Unless we do something about housing stock — building, building, building — this is a dangerous situation for working class folks who used to depend on housing as their main way to accumulate wealth,” said Saiz.
Take Coire Jones, 38, who makes almost $50,000 doing administrative work at a real estate law firm. Jones sets aside roughly $200 a month, mostly by cutting out extraneous spending, and by choosing to rent a small room in an apartment in Somerville for just $750 a month.
This is not how he pictured things going. Jones’s family has been in Massachusetts for generations, and he loves it here. He graduated from college with a history degree in 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession, and struggled to find a job.
He’s now switched career paths and found stable income. But Jones can do the math. He knows that at his current income, he’ll never be able to afford even a tiny home of his own.
“We millennials were told that you could be whatever you wanted to be and if you went to college you’d be in the middle class,” he said. “I don’t mind renting for the rest of my life. But the foundation of the American economy is that everyone buys a house, and that equity allows you to do a lot of different things and achieve financial stability. And that no longer exists for my generation.”
That doesn’t stop people from trying.
Every year, 200 to 250 people enroll in first-time homebuyer classes at the Chinatown-based Asian Community Development Corporation, one of countless groups that aim to teach would-be buyers the ropes of mortgages, property inspection, and other intricacies of the biggest investment most people will ever make.
In previous years, it was common for 20 to 40 people who took the class to purchase a home, said Angie Liou, the Asian CDC’s executive director. Last year, only six did.
Latimore, of the Codman Square CDC, said a lucky few are able to purchase with the help of down payment and mortgage assistance programs sponsored by the city and other public entities.
Those who aren’t able to buy are left to grapple with what it means that they may never access homeownership.
Some, like Harnois, are willing to stick it out as renters. She is too connected to the neighborhood where she grew up and today works in to consider leaving.
And then there are people like Lillian Rotondo, an East Cambridge resident who works in biotech sales. She said she can’t quite believe the prices of the homes she sees on the market.
She has a familiar story: She and her husband, a chef who works in the Seaport, make good money — roughly $240,000 a year. But it still doesn’t feel like enough to afford a $600,000 or $700,000 place, especially because Rotondo is pregnant with their first child, which they know will be expensive in its own way.
Lillian Rotondo, who works in biotech sales, has been searching for a home with her husband, Marc Rotondo, for the last few years. They walked with their dog, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in East Cambridge, near their apartment.
(David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)
Rotondo, who is pregnant with her first child, and her husband are likely going to move out of Massachusetts in order to afford buying a home.
(David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)
Rotondo’s parents migrated to the US from El Salvador with $20 to their name, she said. Years later, they were able to save up enough to buy a home on Long Island.
It’s important to Rotondo, who is 40, to do the same. And because they cannot afford it here, Rotondo and her husband are going to move, most likely to Rhode Island, somewhere near Providence.
“We have worked hard our entire lives,’ she said. ”We should be able to afford a two-bedroom. So we’ll go somewhere we can.”
Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.
Boston, MA
‘More than just a game’: Free chess classes aim to reduce youth violence in Boston – The Boston Globe
“I know we’re used to rushing, but this is a mind game. So we want to slow down and think,” Shaheed said. “Don’t move off of impulse.”
It’s a message that extends far beyond the chess board.
Organizers of Boston’s new Chess for Peace program are using one of history’s oldest board games to teach kids important life skills, including strategic thinking and conflict resolution. Their goals are to reduce youth violence and address the negative impacts of technology.
The program offers free chess classes Sunday afternoons in the basement of the Madison Park High School gym in Roxbury. It’s affiliated with a Boston Public Schools initiative that also includes basketball, boxing, yoga, rugby, and more, an effort to support families and keep students engaged throughout the week.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
The 6-WON-7 program, which has grown significantly over the past couple years, is about to mark its 100th Sunday, said Cory McCarthy, director of student support at Boston Public Schools. School administrators launched the program partly in response to reports about unruly teenagers causing chaos at the South Bay shopping center and elsewhere on weekends, McCarthy said.
“School should feel like a community,” he said. “It’s the forgotten piece in the academic journey. It’s a safety issue. It’s violence prevention, it’s youth development, it’s all part of student wellness.”
While violent crime has decreased overall, youth violence remains a concern in Boston, largely concentrated among small groups of teenagers and sometimes fueled by gang affiliations. Social media often plays a role, experts say, with kids posting threats or bragging about crimes they’ve committed.
As technology shortens our attention spans, encourages rash decision-making and limits in-person interactions, playing chess can be a robust kind of antidote, said Renee Callender, a retired Boston police detective who spearheaded the program.
“It’s more than just a game. It actually mirrors life,” she said. “In the game of chess, like life, every action comes with consequences.”
During more than three decades on the police force, Callender saw firsthand how cycles of violence start and end. She also founded a nonprofit called Promoting Conflict Resolution, Inc.
She said the idea for the program came from watching a youth chess tournament on TV; she was impressed by how poised and attentive the players looked. Maybe this could help kids in Boston stay out of trouble, she thought.
“It’s not only about how to play but how to lose,” she said. “How to gracefully lose. How to be humble.”
Indeed, it’s all fun and games until your king is in check.
Jacquami eventually lost to his opponent, 7-year-old Filip Rancic, who said his winning strategy involved steadily advancing his pieces toward the middle of the board.
“Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. So that’s good for him,” said Filip’s dad, Milan Rancic.
“They need to learn to be patient enough to develop a strategy, and obviously avoid a tantrum when they lose — pretty much everything we want our kids to learn,” he added.
During the class, three sets of players sat across from each other at classroom desks, with Shaheed monitoring their games and offering instruction. Sometimes the clink of plastic chess pieces was the only sound in the room.
“I think I got checkmate,” exclaimed Henry Lee, 10, bouncing excitedly in his chair.
Shaheed inspected the board and confirmed — checkmate, indeed.
“Good game,” Lee said, reaching out to shake hands with his opponent, 11-year-old Jesus Beltran.
“Can you believe you just lost to a 10-year-old?” he asked, grinning.
Beltran laughed, rolled his eyes and started setting up the board again; he had won the previous match. In addition to chess, the boys play soccer together. They agreed their friendship can easily withstand some light-hearted competition.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
A few turns into the next game, Lee made a move he instantly regretted.
“Can I have that turn back?” he asked Beltran, who smiled and shook his head no.
“So often, they’re focused on just one piece,” said Rhodes Pierre, another instructor with the program. “I tell them to examine the entire board.”
Pierre, who grew up in Mattapan, has experienced firsthand the impacts of violence. His older brother was shot and killed in 1994 near their childhood home, about two weeks after he inadvertently witnessed another daytime shooting nearby. The case was later linked to a neighborhood drug gang, according to news reports at the time.
Pierre said he started playing chess in college and quickly came to appreciate the life skills it teaches.
“Giving people another outlet to express themselves without having to revert to violence, that’s a good thing,” he said. “Making people sit down and think. It’s a better avenue than what we have right now.”
While sprinkling in the basics of chess strategy, Shaheed sends a similar message.
“It’s about seeing the moves behind the moves,” he told the class. “It takes paying attention, hearing your own self think. Most games are won or lost because of focus.”
It’s something he personally learned the hard way, Shaheed said.
Now 45, he spent much of his youth caught in a cycle of poverty, crime, incarceration, and mental illness. From foster care and psychiatric institutions to jails and prison, he ended up playing a lot of chess.
The game took on a central role in his life, an overarching metaphor that changed the way he approached decision-making, Shaheed said. Especially when he found himself in a hostile environment, he would think about the moves available to him and their potential consequences. That finally helped him leave the streets behind and forge a new path.
“The easy money, it wasn’t working. It was almost like a setup — nothing made sense anymore,” he said. “I needed a better move.”
He still plays chess regularly with various partners he’s befriended around Boston. He said he hopes younger generations will find some of the same benefits he’s experienced.
“Chess is a game of distress, tribulations, defeat, obstacles, resistance, competition, sorrow, and conquest,” Shaheed wrote in his recently published book, “Games Over: The Real Story About Chess and Life.”
“And that’s what life is all about — overcoming barriers and making progress.”
Lea Skene can be reached at lea.skene@globe.com. Follow her on X @lea_skene.
Boston Marathon
“Every kid should have access to the best, most cutting edge treatments, and we aim to do that here, regardless of where the kids come from or what resources they have themselves.”
In our “Why I’m Running” series, Boston Marathon athletes share what’s inspiring them to make the 26.2-mile trek from Hopkinton to Boston. Looking for more race day content? Sign up for Boston.com’s pop-up Boston Marathon newsletter.
Name: Brian Wishart
Age: 42
City/State: Marblehead, Mass.
I am running as the Chief of the Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine division at Spaulding Rehab to help support the hospital and adaptive sports programs.
At Spaulding Rehabilitation, we have a full team that is really incredible at what they do. Each staff member, from the physicians, therapists, nurses, case managers, social workers, to the front desk and care assistants, are incredible.
We work everyday in inpatient, in the clinic, in the therapy gym, and doing research to bring these types of outcomes to all our patients. Though we see wonderful outcomes, there is always work to be done.
One of our goals is to really integrate the amazing research being done at Spaulding into clinical care.
Every kid should have access to the best, most cutting edge treatments, and we aim to do that here, regardless of where the kids come from or what resources they have themselves.
We also want to make sure we are thinking about some of those less flashy innovations in terms of how we are educating or empowering our patients, or how we are supporting and helping them cope with a new reality.
Pediatric care is resource intensive, from needing a lot of expertise to just needing multiple sizes of each piece of equipment.
I am working to raise funds and support to really think broadly and expansively about what we are doing and how we provide care everyday for every patient.
That may mean bringing meaningful research to the clinical setting or ensuring there are enough child life specialists available with the resources they need to make these children comfortable in the hospital.
It is a privilege what I get to do every day and I thank you all sincerely for any support!
Editor’s note: This entry may have been lightly edited for clarity or grammar.
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Boston, MA
Boston’s season stays alive with dramatic buzzer-beater to advance to conference title game
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The Boston Terriers men’s basketball team advanced to the Patriot League finals on Sunday with a nail-biting victory over the Navy Midshipmen, 73-72.
And it couldn’t have come closer than what took place at the end of the second half.
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Boston University Terriers guard Michael McNair (20) drives to the basket against Northwestern Wildcats forward Arrinten Page (22) during the second half at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Nov. 7, 2025. (David Banks/Imagn Images)
Chance Gladden #2 of the Boston University Terriers is defended by Ben Eisendrath #5 of the Harvard Crimson during the 2025 college Basketball Hall of Fame Showcase game between Harvard Crimson and Boston University Terriers on Nov. 22, 2025, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. (M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Terriers came into the game as the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament. The Midshipmen had the best record in the conference and were the No. 1 seed. The game was tied at 70 apiece with Navy inbounding the ball from the other side of the court with about 8.4 seconds left in the game.
Navy’s Austin Benigni received the pass and took the ball coast-to-coast for the go-ahead layup.
Boston’s Chance Gladden received the ball quickly in a last-ditch effort to try to put the Terriers back up. He dribbled up the court, went behind his back as he crossed mid-court and threw up a prayer from well beyond the 3-point line. It went in.
Navy Midshipmen’s mascot, Bill the Goat, in the stand during the Army/Navy basketball game on Feb. 21, 2026, at Christl Arena in West Point, New York. (David Hahn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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The Terriers improved to 17-16 on the season and still have hopes that they could punch their ticket to the dance with a win in the Patriot League Championship. Navy, with a record of 26-7, may be on the outside looking into the NCAA Tournament this season.
Gladden finished with 26 points on 8-of-12 from the field. He made three 3-pointers and had four assists to his credit. Michael McNair added 22 points.
Navy’s Aidan Kehoe had 26 points, 12 rebounds and five steals in the loss. Benigni added 17 points.
A detailed view of the Patriot League conference logo shown on the floor before a college basketball game between the American Eagles and the Navy Midshipmen at Bender Arena on Jan. 12, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
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Boston will play Lehigh in the Patriot League Championship on Wednesday.
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