Jennifer Smith

Boston, United States

Journalist at @CWBeacon once found at @DotNews, @BostonGlobe, @dpa. Cohost of @The_HorseRace and the Codcast. The parties are advised to chill.

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Articles

Faced with a housing crunch, a local move to ‘do something’

6 days ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

PRICES ARE BALLOONING, unit construction is stagnating, populations are declining, and a housing crisis deserves to be treated as such, the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates declared on Wednesday. The regional legislative body voted 14-1, which counts as 79 percent to 21 percent because the delegates’ votes are weighted by their town’s population, in favor of a resolution declaring a housing crisis on Cape Cod.
FEMA quietly removes access to New England coastal erosion hazard tool

1 week ago | yahoo.com | Jennifer Smith

Part of the Nantucket coastline, shored up with 'geotubes' to slow erosion. (Photo by Jennifer Smith/CommonWealth Beacon)At some point between February and early March, as seasonal wind and rain hammered New England coasts, a relatively new but enthusiastically embraced tool for predicting erosion slipped off the Federal Emergency Management Agency website.
FEMA quietly removes access to New England coastal erosion hazard tool

1 week ago | whatsupnewp.com | Jennifer Smith

AT SOME POINT between February and early March, as seasonal wind and rain hammered New England coasts, a relatively new but enthusiastically embraced tool for predicting erosion slipped off the Federal Emergency Management Agency website. Pioneered on Nantucket in 2020, the Coastal Erosion Hazard viewer that covered all of New England is now unavailable.
FEMA quietly removes access to New England coastal erosion hazard tool

1 week ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

AT SOME POINT between February and early March, as seasonal wind and rain hammered New England coasts, a relatively new but enthusiastically embraced tool for predicting erosion slipped off the Federal Emergency Management Agency website. Pioneered on Nantucket in 2020, the Coastal Erosion Hazard viewer that covered all of New England is now unavailable.
‘Water doesn't know property lines’: Where Massachusetts’ climate and housing crises meet

3 weeks ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

While the winter winds battered away at the south coast of Nantucket, the island hummed along in year-round mode. Around 14,200 people puttered into work, sent their kids to the local schools, hit up the few dozen restaurants open during the off-season, and dodged downtown when the tides rushed in and flooded over brick and cobblestone.
Judge orders HUD to release $30 million in grants to fair housing groups

4 weeks ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

A FEDERAL JUDGE in Massachusetts has ordered roughly $30 million in grants that were stripped midstream from fair housing organizations reinstated, after organizations including a Holyoke-based center sued the Trump administration demanding the return of their grant funding. On February 27, organizations received notifications that 78 Fair Housing Initiatives Program grants were being cut off.
Anti-discrimination housing orgs sue to ‘quite literally keep the lights on’

1 month ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

WHEN THE NONDESCRIPT email landed in Maureen St. Cyr’s inbox, she didn’t know it would be taking of more than half her housing nonprofit’s funding with it. Included was a simple letter attachment, immediately terminating $212,500 left in a congressionally-approved $425,000 federal grant that funded the Holyoke-based Massachusetts Fair Housing Center’s enforcement and outreach activities to address discriminatory housing practices. It also made it clear that the next year’s $425,000 grant was cut.
MBTA can be sued over assault by bus driver, SJC rules

1 month ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

A CUSTOMER WHO was assaulted by an MBTA bus driver with known anger management issues, including a prior assault against a passenger, can sue the transportation authority over the attack, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled.
SJC gives a Second Amendment win to Mass. lawmakers looking to license non-residents

1 month ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

MASSACHUSETTS LAWMAKERS are free to require that New Hampshire residents – and all out-of-staters – have licenses to carry firearms within the borders of the Bay State after the state’s highest court decided recent gun licensing rules for non-residents pass constitutional muster. Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Tuesday, can enforce its gun laws even against people who are legally allowed to carry a gun in another state.
‘Are you out of your mind?’: Five moments from Mayor Michelle Wu’s immigration testimony

1 month ago | commonwealthbeacon.org | Jennifer Smith

Mayor Michelle Wu offered a forceful defense of the city’s decade-old Trust Act, a policy that limits Boston police cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during a testy House Oversight hearing in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. With federal dollars on the line and threats of prosecution bandied about by several members of Congress, here are five illustrative exchanges between the mayor – the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan – and House lawmakers. Rep.