This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
⛅Some clouds with a chance of afternoon showers and highs around 72. Sunset is at 7:25 p.m.
In honor of Tax Day, here’s a tip from a local accountant: if you owe the federal government money this year and were considering asking for an extension, note that any balance owed is still due today. An extension applies only to filing paperwork, not to paying the tax bill, said Jeff Rogers, a tax partner at the CPA firm E.J. Callahan and Associates.
“You don’t have an extension of time to pay the tax that you owe. And it’s also the day that first-quarter estimates for next period are due for those that have outside, non-wage income,” Rogers told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos. On the other hand, the average refund this year for people who are eligible was $3,521 as of last month, according to the most recent data available. If you end up getting a refund this year, “the longer you wait, the longer you’re leaving some money on the table,” Rogers told Bustillos. “So best to just kind of dive in and get that money back.”
Four Things to Know
1. Hampshire College in Amherst will close at the end of the calendar year, after the fall 2026 semester. The school, which started classes in 1970, has been struggling with debt, declining enrollment and falling revenue. Current students can finish their degrees at partner institutions — Hampshire is part of the Five College Consortium, which includes Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and UMass Amherst.
Hampshire College has a small endowment, and tuition makes up about 90% of its operating budget, college officials have said. Enrollment fell by about 100 students from 2024 to 2025, with only about 747 students enrolled last fall. “It is hard as a small college to make it at this moment in particular,” said Michael Horn, cofounder of the research organization the Clayton Christensen Institute. “While they had a unique value proposition, the market was pretty clearly telling them it was a unique value proposition that was not valued.”
2. The discussion over how Massachusetts should regulate social media use continues. Gov. Maura Healey said she wants social media platforms to limit teenagers to two hours per day. The bill she filed Tuesday would require platforms to verify the ages of all users — not just teenagers — and “establish strong default safety settings for users under 18.”
This bill comes after the State House passed a bill that would ban children younger than 14 from using social media entirely. “I think that the good news here is that across government and government leadership, you see a recognition … social media and the addiction in social media is out of control and it’s harming our young people,” Healey said.
3. Bob Hall, the first person to officially complete the Boston Marathon in a wheelchair, died over the weekend at 74. “I never thought about what I was doing as ‘first’ or ‘unique.’ I was really doing it for myself,” he told GBH News last year, at the 50th anniversary of his 1975 race. “I never even thought about the time. It was a ride of enjoyment.”
Since Hall’s first Boston Marathon, about 2,000 wheelchair athletes have followed his lead. One of them is Jason Fowler, who met Hall through a friend in 1991 after a spinal cord injury and bought his first wheelchair from him. “[Hall] was in there welding and, even with his mobility challenges and everything, welding and fabricating these beautiful works of art that ... still some of those same techniques and designs have carried on to the chairs today,” Fowler said. “Really what that meant for me was my freedom after an injury.”
4. Diseases and invasive insects are killing more trees than logging in Northeastern forests, according to researchers at the University of Vermont. The researchers examined a federal database from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, tracking the causes of tree deaths between 2009 and 2024. Over that period, tree deaths from natural causes increased nearly 40%, in part because a warming climate has created favorable conditions for invasive insects and diseases.
“We’re getting into a phase with all these novel stressors — like emerald ash borer, hemlock woolly adelgid, beech leaf disease, extreme precipitation, events like droughts, too much wind and rain — those are all coming together to generate higher levels of mortality than we’re used to here,” said study co-author Tony D’Amato.
Will the spring home-buying spree finally lift the logjam that’s been plaguing the housing market
What’s the current state of the housing market? Cassidy Norton, associate publisher for the real estate analytics company The Warren Group, summed it up in a sentence: “Everything is expensive,” she told GBH’s Marilyn Schairer.
Single-family homes that sold in Massachusetts in March had a median price of $655,000, up 4.4% from March 2025. Condos had a median price of $537,000, up 1.5%, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
That said, more condos are coming onto the market. The Massachusetts Association of Realtors recorded a 17.2% increase in condominium listings compared with last March, along with a 1% increase in single-family home listings.
There’s an “overall sense of more listings coming on, and that should bring relief for some buyers,” Sarah Gustafson, past president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, told Schairer. “You may be seeing a little more inventory than you’ve seen previously, and a bit of a downward pressure on the prices.”
Dig deeper:
-Keeping private rentals cheaper is key to Mass. housing crisis, new report says
-'Every bit helps’: Chatham tries a new model for affordable housing
-Only 1 in 7 Greater Boston renters can afford a starter home, new report finds
GBH Daily
Your essential daily newsletter delivering trusted news, local insights, ways to connect, and can't miss programs from Boston and beyond.
