BEVERLY — As the state’s top housing official, Ed Augustus says all types of housing are needed to solve the state’s shortage. On a trip to Beverly on Friday, he visited a place where two wildly different types are playing out on the same street.
Augustus got a tour of the Beverly Housing Authority’s newly renovated apartment complex on Balch Street for low-income seniors and for people with disabilities. Down the street, Cummings Center is planning to construct a condominium building where the going rate for a two-bedroom condo is expected to be more than $600,000.
The contrast could hardly be bigger. But Augustus said the availability of even high-priced condos can free up houses for young families and create movement in a housing market that has virtually ground to a halt.
“I think every new unit of housing that comes online in Massachusetts is a help,” he said.
Augustus, who was appointed by Gov. Maura Healey last June as the state’s secretary of housing and livable communities, came to Beverly as part of a plan to tour all 240 housing authorities in the state (Beverly was his 28th). Local officials took him to Balch Street, where a nearly $4.9 million renovation of the 25-unit, three-building complex is nearing completion.
“I was impressed,” Augustus said after his tour. “It’s great to see units that were tired be refreshed. Everybody should be able to live in a safe, healthy and dignified place. This project in Beverly is going to make sure the 25 seniors who live in these units get this kind of housing.”
Beverly Housing Authority Executive Director Debra Roy described the project as “kitchen and bath and window and door renovations.” It also includes new fire alarms, sprinklers and heat baseboards. The complex was built in 1959.
The Balch Street apartments have been closed since November 2022, when the project began. Roy said residents moved to other Beverly Housing Authority units during the renovations and can return to Balch Street if they want to. She’s hoping that residents can start moving back in the second week of April.
“I’m thrilled,” Roy said. “It was a long project. We’re glad to see that it’s wrapping up and we can get folks home. It’s beautiful now.”
The Healey administration put a lot of focus on affordable housing in its proposed Affordable Homes Act, including a $1.6 billion investment in public housing over the next five years. The state’s existing stock of 43,000 public housing units is at risk due to a backlog of $4 billion in deferred maintenance, according to a fact sheet provided by his office, Augustus said.
“Imagine where we’d be not having the 43,000 state-owned units,” he said. “These are our most vulnerable people.”
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Here’s a short video about each of the five themes of geography and how to approach them in the classroom.
Geography Theme 1: Location
Location is the study of where places are located, both absolute and relative.
Absolute location is a definitive reference for a place. So, it’s a place’s latitude and longitude, an address, or any other way to tell exactly where a place is. If you describe your house as being at 123 Main Street, you’re describing an absolute location.
Relative location explains where a place is in relation to other landmarks and the environment. Describing your school as 23 miles from the nearest ocean is using relative location.
Location is important to understanding the geography of a region as it helps us communicate about different places. And defining location helps us understand how things like climate, natural resources, and topography impact humans.
How To Teach Location
Teaching location means teaching kids to describe places, as well as reading and creating maps.
Teach the basics of mapmaking and ideas of location by having students design their own amusement park. Have them think about the absolute and relative locations as they map out their rides. The big roller coaster is at a specific latitude and longitude. It’s also 50 feet from the snow cone stand.
Read books from around the world and, as you do, identify on the map where each story takes place. As you read, talk about how the place shaped the story. For example, how did Spanish topography and culture shape the story of Ferdinand the Bull?
Cut pieces out of a map of the United States (small or large, depending on the grade you teach) and have students guess which state it comes from based on what they see. Is there ocean coastline? A lake? Lots farmland? Can students work together to match each piece with the state it comes from?
Give students large pieces of paper and research tools. Assign them each a country to research and create an atlas page. Then, display all the atlas pages in a public space so they can read about other countries.
Geography Theme 2: Place
Place is about understanding the human and physical characteristics of a location.
Physical characteristics are things like mountains, rivers, beaches, climate, and animal and plant life. Think about what you’d see on a topographical map. Using physical characteristics, a place could be described as dry, arid, and populated by cacti and desert animals.
Human characteristics are things that people have made that define a place. That could be architecture, farms and land use, religious practices, political systems, transportation, and/or communication. Using human characteristics, a place could be described as an advanced, Spanish-speaking democracy with a Catholic majority.
Place is important because the characteristics of a place influence how humans interact with the environment. For example, the amount of rain impacts which crops can grow. Or a place with a redwood forest may create a logging industry in one area.
And place is important for understanding cultural diversity. Culture is shaped by place, and different regions have different traditions and beliefs that are shaped by place.
How To Teach Place
Have students explore the idea of place by working with each element—physical and human—in various projects and all at once.
A project like having students create their own country asks them to think through the characteristics of a country they create, as well as the features of the area they choose to place it on the globe.
Watch a video about the challenge of creating a map of the world like this one:
Then, have students tackle the challenge of how to represent the world map. How have cartographers already solved this problem? What other ideas do students have?
Have students request soil samples from people they know around the country or even the world. Once you have the soil samples, investigate them. What is similar? What is different? How does the composition of the soil tell you about the place it’s from?
Compile a weather report
Assign each student or group of students a city around the world. One day each week or for a few weeks in a row, students look up the weather for that city, record the weather highlights, and keep track of the weather patterns. When students have enough recorded information, have them analyze and present the data. Which city has the highest temperature? The lowest? The biggest range? Smallest range? What can weather tell you about a place?
Investigate maps
Watch a video on how maps have been wrong throughout history:
Then, review different types of maps and discuss what each map shows and what type of information cartographers need to collect to create it.
Human-environment interaction is the consideration of how humans adapt to and modify the environment. So, it’s how people have shaped the land, in positive and negative ways, and how the environment shapes people. For example, human-environment interaction explores how people living in cold climates use natural gas to heat homes, while in more temperate climates, people use other methods of heating and cooling. Another example is how the construction of dams impacts people (more people can live in an area) and the environment (some animals may thrive while others may not; a lake may be created where there wasn’t one before).
Humans are always shifting and impacting the land, so this theme is important to understand how human activities impact the planet and the resulting consequences.
How To Teach Human-Environment Interactions
Teaching human-environment interactions starts with helping kids understand how they benefit from and impact their own environment, and expanding from there.
Have students work together to list their wants and needs. How do they get their wants and needs from their current city? How might their wants and needs change and be met if they lived in a different place?
Calculate population change
Collect population statistics for your town going back at least 50 years. When students present and analyze the data, what do they notice? What trends do they see? What might have influenced those trends? For an extension, invite a local historian into class to talk about the population trends and history of your area.
Investigate the plants that grow naturally in your area and create an image of what a natural yard would look like. Would there be less grass because you live in a dry area? Or would there be tall plants because you live in a place with lots of rain? Have students create a campaign to encourage people to let yards go “wild.”
After watching a 9-minute film about the Isle de Jean Charles, a tiny island community off the Louisiana coast, students learn about how the changes on the island are impacting people who live there. Then, they learn more about the effects of hurricanes for people who live on the coast.
Movement studies the ways that ideas, goods, resources, communication, and trends travel around the world. This includes migration and immigration. Movement could be cell phone reception moving around the world, or refugees fleeing a country during war.
Movement is broken into different types:
Human migration: when people move from one place to another either voluntarily or involuntarily
Transportation of goods and services: moving products from where they are made to another place
Communication of ideas: dissemination of information through various channels
Cultural diffusion: when cultural traits spread from one society to another
A big theme in movement is globalization and the impact of globalization on economies around the world.
How To Teach Movement
Teaching movement involves introducing students to new topics, like shipping, and using familiar tools, like maps.
Read about movement
Read a book like I Ship by Kelly Rice Schmitt and use the book’s narrative to trace how goods move from one place to another through shipping routes.
Have students create a list of places that they would like to visit around the world. How would they get to each location? Have students create a map of how they would get from their hometown to each place. Can they think of creative ways to move from one place to another? For example, are there any shipping routes that go from your town to another country? Or do you want to visit any places that are close enough to travel to via hot-air balloon?
Here’s how to make a map using Google Maps:
Create a family movement map
Ask students to ask their parents and grandparents where their family came from and create a class map of how people moved and immigrated to your town. Note that one family may have more than one immigration or migration route.
Learn about push and pull factors
Watch a video about push and pull factors and migration, like this one:
Then, assign students a region and have them research why people are either moving to or from that region. Some regions to include: Syria, the United States, Pakistan, India, Ukraine.
Regions divide the world into units for study. Each region has some characteristic that unites it.
Formal regions: regions with official boundaries, like cities, states, countries
Functional regions: regions that are defined by connections, like the suburbs around a city that create a region
Vernacular regions: perceived regions like “the Midwest.” There are no official boundaries, but these regions are generally understood.
Studying cultural regions helps students understand how societies have developed over time and how environment shapes human culture.
How To Teach Region
Teach region by creating regions and working with concepts that help define regions, like time zones and artifacts.
Map your school region
Not an Atlas/student-made maps via notanatlas.com
Use students’ addresses to create the region for your class. Then, discuss the physical features. What physical features are included? What man-made features are included? How do the features that are included influence the experience of living there?
Create a wall of time zones
Read a book like At the Same Moment Around the World by Clotilde Perrin and introduce the idea of time zones. Create a clock wall for your room that shows the time zones in different cities around the world.
Look at stamps or money from around the world. What do different countries include on their stamps or money? How does their region and culture impact money or stamps?
More Resources for Teaching the 5 Themes of Geography
You weigh less if you visit certain areas of Canada, namely the Hudson Bay Area and parts of Quebec, because there’s less gravity there than other parts of the world.
