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🌨️The dreaded wintery mix, then rain, with highs around 50.

It’s Thursday, and the sun will set on Boston at 5:32 p.m. A short update to some news we brought you last week : The five employees laid off from the John F. Kennedy Library last week — causing the library’s director to shut it down for the day — all have their jobs back now, GBH’s Diane Adame reports. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

Four Things to Know

DOGE and food banks: Half of a six-person team within the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for getting food for low-income seniors onto food bank shelves in the Northeast was fired under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “We work with the most vulnerable populations — children, veterans, seniors, homeless,” one of the employees said. “That is going to trickle down to folks that are on these needed programs and benefits.”

The insurance industry is betting that, in a changing climate, stronger and more devastating storms are coming to coastal areas. Here’s what that means for Chappaquiddick resident Bob Fynbo: he spent $70,000 last year to fix his roof — at the behest of his insurance company — and still saw his annual premium quote increase from $3,200 to $11,900. More Martha’s Vineyard residents said rising insurance premiums are causing them to put off retirement, surgeries, and meals out — and some are considering leaving the island. 

Boston’s zoning board rejected a proposal to build the city’s first birthing center in Roxbury’s Moreland Street Historic District after people in the neighborhood said they don’t want non-residential property there. Birthing centers, like the one Community Movement Commons wants to build, are medical facilities for labor and delivery that resemble homes more than hospitals. Community Movement Commons bought two vacant houses in the neighborhood with plans to demolish them and build the center in their place.

Find garbage near me: Worcester is planning on adding 200 combined trash and recycling bins across the city. Right now, the city’s public trash cans are mostly located downtown. Worcester officials used interactive maps to survey residents about where they might like to see some new receptacles, and say the neighborhoods of Bell Hill and Vernon Hill will get some new bins.

Why is it so hard to build housing in Massachusetts? Construction blues and never-ending maintenance

I’m GBH’s Sam Turken, and all week we’ve been exploring why it’s so hard to build new housing in Massachusetts. We talked about finding land, rehabbing old properties, designing buildings and the sometimes frustrating zoning process.

Now, on to the final phases of developing a new building.

Before cranes and bulldozers rumble onto the property, the developer has to secure building permits. This step can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Then, they have to hire contractors, navigate a nationwide shortage of construction workers and purchase building materials.

If the costs of lumber and steel are especially high — as they were during the COVID-19 pandemic — the developer may have to alter the design or even pause the project.

As construction comes to an end, it’s time to accept rental applications. Given the ongoing affordable housing shortage, there are usually a lot more applicants than apartments in the building. A developer may hold a lottery to decide who gets to move in.

And after people move in... stuff starts breaking.

Face it: clogged sinks and overflowing toilets are inevitable, regardless of whether the complex is brand new or decades old.

The building owner also has to pay for insurance, property taxes and sometimes utilities. Mazzocchi said the cost of paying a property manager and other expenses can amount to more than $7,000 per unit annually. Add that to the developer’s debt payments at high interest rates, and, yeah… you get the idea.

“We’re in it for the right reasons — to address the housing crisis,” Mazzocchi said. “But the way that the projects are put together financially, we need to have enough revenue to cover all of our expenses.”

But for tenants struggling to make rent, it may not be helpful to know why there’s a housing shortage. They can’t afford to wait years for more apartment buildings to go up and rents to come down.

Your thoughts: How would you make housing in Massachusetts more affordable? 

Given ultimate power over housing in Massachusetts, GBH Daily reader Stephen would “get rid of many of the rules that, at best, are about government enforced aesthetics.” That would mean no more parking requirements and lot size minimums, legalizing three-deckers “everywhere residential buildings are allowed” and “allowing wonderful small first floor retail or small corner stores in residential neighborhoods.”

Jonathan echoed similar points, and also called for allowing more homes that are neither single-family homes nor giant buildings: “duplexes, triple-deckers, quadplexes,” Jonathan wrote. That would give options for both young families looking for a way into the market and empty nesters who want to downsize within their communities, “or just flexible housing when financial crises or divorce throw a wrench in our life expectations.”

Linda, a retired urban planner, wrote that building more housing won’t alone fix the state’s affordability crisis: short-term rentals, landlords using pricing algorithms to determine rents and private equity firms who buy up housing still exist. “The state appears to be addressing the problem without spending significant dollars,” Linda wrote. “In short, this policy has been and will be a disaster for local municipalities and it will not help the problems of affordability without much better tailored zoning changes meant to control the type of housing units built.”

That concludes our focus on housing this week. If you’d like to get in touch with story ideas or news tips, reply to this email or send a message to daily@wgbh.org . Thanks for reading!