Some random thoughts on recent news items:
Nantucket’s very unusual housing experiment
This has to be one of the weirder housing programs out there, as reported by WBUR, i.e., a pilot program that allows the town to use public funds to buy deed restrictions on private homes in order to preserve year-round housing. … Sounds like Nantucket, with the state’s approval, is getting into a variation of reverse mortgages.
I’ll let Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr explain how it might work since I have trouble understanding: “They could potentially sell a deed restriction and take that cash and use it to live off of, and stay in the house … on a promise, a commitment, that they would only sell that house to another year-round family.”
‘Audit on how steak tip-craving, indicted Quincy official stole thousands nears completion’
It was more than a 100 pounds of bourbon steak tips … That’s all I wanted to know when I clicked on the Herald story.
‘Boston Magazine? Is it really still in business?’
Once you get past the obligatory, time-worn Howie cheap shots, this a pretty funny Herald column about the good old days at Boston Magazine, now owned by the Globe.
UMass and Regis College: Private mixed-use developers?
It sure sounds like UMass ultimately doesn’t have a clue what to do with a large chunk of the old Mount Ida College campus in Newton that it rushed to buy seven years ago. The BBJ and Universal Hub have the RFP details (or lack thereof) on UMass’s interest in co-developing the site. I liked this line from UH: “(The plan) would still leave UMass Amherst 50 acres on which to teach and stuff but, of course, not grab any students from UMass Boston, which has its own property redevelopment deal at the old Bayside Expo site in Dorchester.” .…
Meanwhile, B&T reports that Regis College is trying to sell off a 62-acre parcel of its Weston campus, hiring Colliers to pitch the land for potential private development that could include an “18-lot single-family subdivision, and a cottage-style continuing care community including 28 cottage-style homes.” … If that’s the choice, we all know which option Weston will choose, right?
‘Man uses flamethrower to clear snow- and ice-covered street in Georgia’
Why didn’t a New Englander think of this? ….
‘Rampant burnout,’ hazing and physician unionization efforts
When you think about it, the brutal training programs young physicians, interns and fellows go through are a border-line form of hazing, which largely explains recent physician unionization efforts at Beth Israel and other hospitals (Globe). … Hospital administrators have long put up with the controversial training practices for a number of unstated reasons, in addition to the stated reasons (such as how intense training programs are needed to prepare doctors for an intense career): A.) it’s cheap labor B.) because, gosh darn it, older physician administrators went through it and so should the young ones C.) brutal hours for young doctors means less brutal hours for older doctors. …
Hub Blog 