Kennedy taught in New York public schools and advocated for disability rights after suffering severe spinal cord injury
Kyle Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, has died at the age of 42.
Kyle, the daughter of Michael Kennedy, who died in 1997, and Victoria Gifford Kennedy, “passed away peacefully” on 21 September at her home in Westwood, Massachusetts, according to her obituary published by Burke Funeral Homes.
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week, we're going to jump right into it with a philosophical question: What is an accessory dwelling unit anyway?
It's a question that officials in Somerville, Massachusetts, are realizing they didn't know the answer to after learning that a state law allowing ADUs in single-family neighborhoods could also require them to approve three-story backyard mini-apartments.
As the Boston Globereported on Sunday, Somerville's "deep ethos in favor of new housing" is being tested by the extent of the state law. Elected officials are describing the potential for three-story ADUs as a "joke," and the area's state lawmakers, including one who voted for the state law, are demanding reforms to stop them.
The law in question was a statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU) legalization tucked inside a major housing package of mostly new spending programs that passed in 2024.
The bill required municipalities to allow ADUs of either 900 square feet or half the size of the primary dwelling (whichever is smaller) anywhere single-family homes are allowed. A subsequent rule issued by state regulators also forbade localities from imposing height and bulk limits on ADUs that are stricter than the limits imposed on primary dwellings.
That latter rule is what's causing Somerville's freakout.
Because the town allows triple-decker apartments (a three-story triplex common in New England) in all its single-family zones, the state rule means that it must also allow ADUs to be three stories tall.
The Globe story notes that the mini-triple-deckers could still only be 900 square feet, meaning each floor of a mini-triple-decker would have to be pretty small. Thus far, no one has proposed building an ADU tower in Somerville.
Even so, the town is worried that someone will eventually propose one of these "out-of-scale" units that it'll have to approve. Its officials are now agitating for changes to the state law to prevent this.
On the one hand, one can perhaps understand why Somerville officials feel blindsided.
The text of the 2024 ADU law allows localities to set "reasonable" height and bulk limits on accessory units. It was state regulators who decided after the law's passage that requiring ADUs to be shorter than the primary unit was "unreasonable."
On the other hand, allowing a second home on a lot to be as tall as the first house sounds "reasonable" enough. Can one complain about out-of-scale development when the new unit is the same height as an existing home and a little bit smaller?
Somerville is not the first city where people's own colloquial definition of an accessory unit as "a tiny home that doesn't bother anyone" has clashed with official regulatory definitions that allow ADUs to be a fair bit bigger.
San Diego's ADU Bonus program once allowed a technically unlimited number of ADUs to be built on single-family parcels near transit stops. (Height and bulk regulations imposed practical limits on how many units could fit on a site.)
That enabled developers to build what were, in effect, ADU apartment complexes on large single-family lots throughout the city. This year, the city imposed new restrictions to stop these "monster" ADU developments, including a per-lot accessory unit cap.
The latest dust-up in Somerville, like the San Diego controversy before it, provides several lessons about the realities of housing reform.
The first is that the definition of "accessory dwelling unit" is completely arbitrary.
In Massachusetts, an ADU is a 900-square-foot home that can be one story or three stories, depending on the town and zoning district it's being built in.
In Montana, it's a 1,000-square-foot unit. In California, state law can require localities to allow ADUs as large as 1,200 square feet. Under certain conditions, these ADUs can even be sold separately from the main house.
At a certain point, an accessory dwelling unit is just a dwelling unit. A house is a house.
The second lesson is that any ADU reform that is actually intended to produce new housing units is going to cause controversy.
State and local laws allowing ADUs have been one of the more common forms of housing reforms to pass.
Supply-boosters see them as a way to get a modest number of new units. Supply skeptics don't see much to object to about allowing someone to install a kitchenette and bathroom in their garage.
If the ADU regulations don't allow much more than the garage conversion, supply-boosters will be disappointed and push for expansions of the law. California passed dozens of ADU laws before they started enabling actual units to be built.
If an ADU law actually allows more homes, the ADUs will look like homes, and the supply skeptics will be mad.
No amount of branding or planning will resolve the inherent conflict of some people wanting more development while others oppose it in their neighborhoods.
Thus far, Massachusetts' ADU law has been modestly productive. The state's ADU survey reports that 2,048 ADU permits have been issued since the state law went into effect in January 2025. About half of those units are attached ADUs (think the garage with the kitchenette).
That's a little under 10 percent of Massachusetts total housing production during that time, per the Census Bureau's building permit survey.
At 50 units permitted, Somerville has actually approved the second most ADUs of any jurisdiction in the state. (Boston has only approved 49.)
But now that it's facing the prospect of allowing ADUs that look like actual homes, it's starting to get cold feet about the new law.
While Spain is tightening its tenant protections and rent controls in the face of housing protests, Portugal is trying to remove regulations on its rental housing industry. Either way, housing protesters are clashing with police.
The Urban Institute has a new white paper on whether data center development is coming at the expense of housing development.
A new report on home construction in Chicago finds that the practice of aldermanic privilege (where individual aldermen can veto projects in their district) is strangling development.
A school security official at an elite Boston school has been charged with the rape of a woman visiting from Ireland after police say they found her naked on the side of the road outside the Massachusetts State Police barracks on Martha's Vineyard.
The suspect was allegedly a guest at the barracks visiting a state trooper friend from college, prosecutors said in court at his arraignment.
Edward Brown, 27, pleaded not guilty in connection with the alleged Aug. 15 attack, which prosecutors said took place inside the barracks.
He allegedly met the victim at The Ritz, a bar in Oak Bluffs — the upscale waterfront community where former President Barack Obama owns a home.
Police say they received two 911 calls around 1 a.m. and arrived to find a naked woman in distress. She said she had been approached by a man at the bar before blacking out.
Assistant District Attorney Courtney Scalice presented a graphic account of what happened in court, telling the judge the victim told investigators she had been followed around the bar by a Black man in a white hat, before she awoke face down and naked.
She told investigators he held her down despite her kicking and screaming. Eventually, she asked for water, and when her attacker left, she said she "ran for her life" out of the building.
She told police she ran down two flights of stairs and out of the building and had been on the road for a few minutes before someone stopped to help.
The responding Oak Bluffs police officers saw bruises on her legs and a red mark on her neck, Scalice said.
Brown had allegedly been staying at the barracks as a guest of a trooper stationed there for the summer. Prosecutors identified the trooper as Ryan Costello and said they found Brown with help from a bouncer at The Ritz, the bar where the victim allegedly met her attacker.
The bouncer didn't know his name but knew he was friends with state troopers and had a photo. Oak Bluffs police sent the picture to Costello on Aug. 29, two weeks after the alleged assault, Scalice said. He identified the man shown as Brown and said they'd been friends since college.
Then on Sept. 11, Costello's attorney gave investigators screenshots of a text conversation between the trooper and Brown, Scalice said.
Brown allegedly gave shifting accounts of the night to Costello, Scalice told the judge: First he denied bringing a female to the barracks, then he said she'd come inside but left on her own, and then he claimed he left her in the Uber and she never came in.
At one point, he allegedly texted Costello, "I'm at the barracks with this chick, is that okay?"
Costello, who prosecutors said was not there at the time, replied, "okay." Brown then allegedly asked him where to find condoms and added, "Beers after I slam."
Once detectives identified a suspect and obtained a search warrant for Brown's Uber account, detectives also found a ride from about a half hour before the 911 calls.
"Officers interviewed the Uber driver who confirmed picking up a Black male matching the defendant's description and a very young looking White female and driving them to the State Police barracks," Scalice said. "The Uber driver described the female as appearing very intoxicated while the Black male was not."
Brown is listed in jail records as 5 feet, 11 inches tall and 260 pounds. Prosecutors said that they learned from Boston police that he had been the subject of four police reports from two ex-girlfriends claiming he had been harassing them between March and August of this year.
The victim is from Ireland and has returned home. Scalice said she had been swabbed for DNA and that male samples suitable for comparison had been recovered.
Oak Bluffs police, working with the Boston Police Department's anti-corruption division, arrested Brown at Boston Latin Academy, where he worked in school security, on Oct. 9. Police allegedly found suspected cocaine in his wallet during the arrest.
"The Massachusetts State Police has had no involvement in the Oak Bluffs Police Department’s investigation," Oak Bluffs Police Chief Jonathan Searle said in a Sept. 10 statement, a month before Brown's arrest. "As part of its investigation, Oak Bluffs Police developed probable cause and applied for and received court-authorized search warrants related to the investigation, including warrants executed at the State Police barracks."
"These allegations are deeply troubling," Massachusetts State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble said. "The Massachusetts State Police are fully cooperating with the ongoing criminal investigation and conducting an internal review of applicable policies, visitor authorization procedures and compliance with established requirements. I am committed to maintaining the highest standards of safety, security and accountability at all State Police facilities and ensuring that any identified deficiencies are addressed with appropriate corrective action."
MSP no longer allows guests to stay at police housing on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket as a result of this case.
Brown was released on $10,000 cash bail after his arraignment on Oct. 13. Prosecutors had requested $50,000 bail.
The judge ordered him to stay away from the victim and any witnesses. He's due back in court on Dec. 11.
"Mr. Brown has entered a plea of not guilty and denies the allegations," his defense lawyer, Anthony Ellison, told Fox News Digital Monday. "He maintains full faith in the legal process and looks forward to presenting his case in court. A zealous defense will be mounted on his behalf, as there are always two sides to every story."
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