BOSTON, MA – In advance of Mayor Wu’s State of the City Address this evening, the Josh Kraft for Mayor campaign is providing the following background information related to Mayor Wu’s record on housing, public safety and the state of Boston’s Public Schools – three areas she plans to highlight tonight.

Housing:

By every measure, publicly available housing production numbers rank Mayor Wu at the bottom of big cities across the country. The mayor’s claims of creating and building more housing – and more affordable housing – conflict with the publicly available data put out by her own administration.

• Mayor Wu promised to create 13,060 units of housing in her first four years, but according to ISD numbers, she is barely at 50% of her goal after 3+ years in office. 
• In recent months, Mayor Wu claimed she created 20,000 units of housing, and has now walked that number back to 17,000. Data from the City of Boston’s Inspectional Services (ISD) shows a total of 7,743 building permits were pulled since she took office more than 3 years ago.
• Regarding affordable or income-restricted housing, Mayor Wu claims a third of the 17,000 units are affordable, but only 2,261 of the 7,743 building permits pulled since then are income-restricted.
• In addition, for each year that Mayor Wu has been in office, the numbers of permits pulled have fallen drastically.
  • In 2022, 3,890 building permits were pulled. Most of these projects were due to the leadership and policies of Mayors Walsh and Janey and were permitted under their administration. In fact, 2,586 of the building permits issued in 2022 were pulled in her first 6 months. As the Mayor’s policies were unveiled that year, the numbers dropped by 50% in the last 6 months of the year to only 1,234. 
  • In 2023, a total of 2,064 building permits were pulled, 47% less than 2022. In 2024, 1,859 building permits were pulled through November, a 52% reduction of housing created from 2022. 

Public Safety:

Mayor Wu continues to assert that Boston is the safest city in America. That claim is false.

• According to data collected by the Major Cities Chiefs Association in 2024, Boston is not the safest city in America with respect to violent crimes – identified as homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
  • Columbus, Ohio is the safest city, with 13.2 incidents per 10,000 residents, El Paso, Texas is second with 16.2, and Mesa, Arizona is third safest at 20.8. 
  • Boston had 25.6 incidents of violent crimes per 10,000 residents and had 29 more incidents of violent crime in 2024 than in 2023. In addition, this year is off to a concerning start with shootings in Boston up 50% compared to this point last year.

• The mayor’s failure to meaningfully address the humanitarian crisis and public safety issues at Mass and Cass has resulted in the problems being spread into other neighborhoods, such as Downtown Crossing, the Public Garden, Boston Common, Andrew Square, Roxbury, and the South End, among others.

• There were nearly 1,000 crime reports in the Boston Common/Downtown Crossing area in 2024 – the highest total in seven years, according to Boston Police statistics. A November survey by the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association found that 70 percent of the 320 respondents said they felt less safe than they did at the start of 2024, and 90 percent described public safety as an urgent issue for the area.

BPS/Schools:

Under Mayor Wu, the Boston Public Schools are getting worse, not better, and are failing the thousands of Boston students and their families who deserve quality education and access to opportunity. 

• Under Mayor Wu, BPS graduation rates are down. According to the latest available data, BPS graduation rates decreased for the first-time after years of gains and trailed the state average by 10 points. BPS Students who are low-income, Black, Latino, or English learners significantly trailed their white and Asian peers.

• While saying she will spend “whatever it takes” on White Stadium, Mayor Wu has no timeline or funding plan for Madison Park Vo-Tech High School other than asking the state to help pay for the much-needed renovation. As a result, the project has been temporarily halted, and the outcome is uncertain at best.

• Mayor Wu and BPS have no long-term facilities plan to deal with declining enrollment in the school system and a few months ago, made a surprise announcement of school closures. Over the last decade, BPS enrollment has plummeted from 56,700 to 48,150 students this school year.

• Under Mayor Wu, BPS school buses are slower than ever despite spending $171 million every year to transport about 20,000 students. That’s $8.500 per student each year for buses that can’t even make the opening bell. Over the last three years, on-time performance for BPS school buses has gotten worse each year – from 92% to 91% to 90%, with this year’s number likely to be even lower after an embarrassing start to the year when only 34% of the buses delivered student on time on the first day of school. 

About Josh

Josh Kraft has spent his 35 year career working in disadvantaged communities in and around Boston. He was most recently President of the New England Patriots Foundation, and for three decades he worked with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, including 12 years as its President and CEO.

Josh’s commitment to service began with his first job out of college as an outreach coordinator at a South Boston nonprofit. There he was responsible for making sure at-risk youth attended school in the morning, regularly visiting their families at home. It was in this role that Josh saw firsthand truancy, addiction and domestic violence, but also what is possible for communities when like minded individuals engaged in a common goal.

In 1993, he founded the Boys & Girls Club in Chelsea at a time when the city and its schools were in state receivership. Located in the basement of a public housing development, Josh went door-to-door raising money from local businesses to rehabilitate the facility and organize and fund a summer basketball league coached and refereed by local police officers he had personally recruited. Josh would serve as executive director of the Chelsea Boys & Girls Club for the next 15 years, building and managing an extremely loyal staff and deeply engaged local Board, leading major local fundraising campaigns and piloting innovative programming to create a safe haven for thousands of young people in one of Massachusetts’ most underserved communities.

Unanimously selected to serve as the Boys & Girls Club of Boston’s President and CEO in 2008, Josh fostered a community of more than 200 program partners throughout Boston and Chelsea, doubling the club’s budget to $26 million and leading a five-year campaign which raised nearly $132 million. During his tenure, Josh doubled the organization’s membership, deepened its impact and expanded its reach to Boston’s Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and Mattapan neighborhoods.

For more on Josh and the campaign, visit www.joshforboston.com

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Media Contact:
Eileen O’Connor
eileen@joshforboston.com
617-806-6999