Mayor Walsh said today that work has started at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center to create an area that can house up to 1,000 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 but who do not need more intensive hospital care. Read more.

At yesterday's Zoomed-in City Council meeting, Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester), delayed action on a resolution calling on the city and state to freeze rents, mortgages, evictions and foreclosures during the Covid-19 state of emergency. Read more.

Live Boston reports that the driver of a tractor trailer slammed into several houses on Hampden Street near Dubois Street in Roxbury around 1 p.m. on Thursday. Boston EMS transported the injured driver to a local hospital, but no residents were hurt in the crash, in which the driver first crashed into a UPS truck before hitting the houses, Live Boston reports.

The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday denied a request from the owner of a house on Harvest Street to add dormers to her attic so she could build a master bedroom there and move in - after neighbors, the local civic association and several elected officials opposed her proposal. Read more.

Bloomberg reports Boston-area rents dropped 0.2% from September to October, which, when coupled with an even smaller decrease in New York rents, was apparently enough to cause an unexpected bit of a slowdown in national inflation numbers.

Mission Hill's Boston Building Resources, which specializes in recycling cool home-improvement stuff, was left wondering by a recent donation of a shovel with a seven-foot-long handle: Like what was it used for?

In a series of 311 complaints, a Jamaica Pond resident tells the story of the old desk he or she no longer wanted but which required far more work than expected to have city trash collectors take it away.

The Pondview Avenue resident disassembled the desk, took it outside on Tuesday - and then was put out to come home and find the thing still on the curb and so filed the first of several reports: Read more.

The city opened the Jackson-Mann School as an emergency shelter after the Boston Fire Department evacuated residents of the ten-story building at 15 N. Beacon St. due to "major" flooding that started on the fifth floor around midnight. Read more.

The new owners of the Fairlawn Apartment complex off Cummins Highway in the southern part of Mattapan have renamed it SoMa Apartments at the T, now that a Fairmount Line station has opened across the street: Read more.