The whole country is in the middle of a housing crisis. The commonwealth is feeling the brunt of this as well, but Gov. Maura Healey has just proposed the Affordable Housing Act, which seeks to address this issue across the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts. But this bill is huge and is attempting to combat the housing problem on a wide variety of fronts. To help us understand how the bill could influence our area specifically, as well as better understand some of the more minute problems our area faces, we speak with Keith Fairey, president and CEO of Wayfinders, and Denise Jordan, executive director of the Springfield Housing Authority.

And our housing is not the only thing we’re hoping to change, or seeing change. Emily Brewster, our resident wordster and senior editor at Merriam-Webster, walks us through functional shifts, and a handful of words that have experienced it. And perhaps we extol the virtues and prowess of Merriam Webster’s social media as well.