After reading this headline in Banker & Tradesman (“Apartment Rents Trending Downward in Some Boston Suburbs”) I thought, Aha! New housing construction is finally making an impact. And it is. A little. But what folks at Equity Residential and AvalonBay are saying is that the state’s faltering economy – low jobs growth, a weaker biotech sector, cuts in university and research funding, immigration woes, as cited in the B&T article – may be playing a bigger role in the slight downward trend in rents in Greater Boston. Needless to say, this is not how to address the housing crisis.

As it is, the Globe’s Larry Edelman has a good piece on the murky state of jobs growth (or lack thereof) in Massachusetts, while the Globe’s Shirley Leung writes that Michelle Wu and city developers need to work together, not against each other, when it comes to producing new housing and jobs.

Passing related thought: check out The Atlantic’s new piece on private-equity firms snapping up single-family homes across the country. The article downplays the PE trend in places like Boston. But the Metropolitan Area Planning Council thinks otherwise