Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is scheduled to give her second annual State of the City address Tuesday evening.
The event, which will take place at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, is set to start at 7 p.m. Wu is expected to begin her speech around 7:30 p.m.
The speech is delivered annually to address the city’s progress over the previous year and provide an update on any new urban initiatives the mayor has developed.
In her inaugural address in January 2023, Wu introduced her plans to increase Boston’s population without disrupting the minority communities that reside in the greater Boston area, including initiatives to promote affordable housing and protect renters from eviction and rent gouging.
Wu, the first woman and first Asian American to serve as mayor of Boston, has long been a proponent of rectifying the housing crisis in Boston, advocating for limits on annual rent increases, zoning reforms that stimulate permanent affordable housing and the growth of homeless shelters around the city.
Wu, who in 2021 became the first woman and first Asian American elected mayor of Boston, said she hopes to manage the city’s surging growth while avoiding some of the urban renewal efforts of the last century that ended up displacing thousands of working class, immigrant, and Black and brown residents.
In August, Wu submitted a proposal to the Boston City Council which would allow Boston police to clear the encampments near Mass. and Cass, enforce daily counts of bed spaces at local shelters and require the city to provide transportation to those shelters. The City Council approved the proposal in October, and removal began in early November.
According to a report published by the Warren Group, the median sale price for single-family homes in Massachusetts between January-October 2023 is up 4% from the same 10 months in 2022, while the median sale price for condos has increased 4.9% across the same time frame.
