‘Please help us’: Rent control brought out both its supporters and opponents to Beacon Hill
Two pending bills would allow for cities and towns to decide whether to create rent control regulations in their communities.
Fueled by fears they may lose their homes, advocates took to Beacon Hill Tuesday urging state lawmakers to re-instate rent control in Massachusetts — a critical mechanism that’s needed to help extinguish the region’s heated housing crisis, they say.
“It’s getting harder and harder for my family to keep up, and I’m really worried I’m getting pushed out of my home,” said Maria Torres, a member of Lynn United for Change, The State House News reports.
Last year, Torres’ monthly rent went up by $700, she said.
“That’s why rent control is important,” she added. “Without it, people like me will be pushed out and excluded from our own cities. Communities will be broken up, and that’s not right. Please help us stop it from happening.”
Torres was among the crowd jammed into a hearing before the Joint Committee on Housing, which was collecting testimony on a variety of bills, including a few aimed at opening the door for some form of local rent control.
A little over 25 years since voters statewide shot it down, rent control is on the table again as advocates and some officials see what they consider to be a potential way to slow the rise of soaring rents amid Boston’s unprecedented building boom.
Back in 1994, the ban passed narrowly on the state ballot, with 51 percent in favor to 49 percent opposed. Voters in the only communities with rent control measures at the time, Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline, all voted to keep the policy.
“The affordability and displacement crisis is growing faster than we and many nonprofits can handle it,” City Life / Vida Urbana Executive Director Lisa Owens said, the News Service reports. “The need for bold, comprehensive solutions has never been greater.”
The Joint Committee on Housing at the State House hears testimony on rent control.
Pending before the committee are two bills to allow rent control to come back at the local level.
State Rep. David Rogers, of Cambridge, has introduced legislation to allow cities and towns to limit annual rent increases.
The cap “shall not exceed the annual change in the Consumer Price Index … or five percent, whichever is less,” the bill says. Eligible tenants would include those whose income is 80 percent or less than the area median income.
Another proposal, co-sponsored by Cambridge state Rep. Mike Connolly and Boston state Rep. Nika Elugardo, would allow municipalities to create rent control, among other tenant protections, through local ordinances and bylaws.
“Passage of this bill seems like an extraordinary measure because it would roll back the law that says we can’t touch rent prices in the commonwealth,” Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, who supports the bill, told the committee, according to the News Service. “Some people might even say it will fundamentally alter our economy. The reality is we’re already living in extraordinary times, and if we don’t do something, our economy will be fundamentally altered and the people who can least afford to and are the most vulnerable will suffer the most.”
Boston City Councillors Ricardo Arroyo, Kim Janey, and Michelle Wu addressed spoke in favor of rent control at the State House.
Both bills say owner-occupied buildings with three units or less would be exempt from the rent control regulations.
Landlords and opponents who spoke before the committee say, however, that rent control could cripple housing production, which they argue is needed to meet current demand.
“We believe rent control would be a cold shower to production at a time when we need more production,” said Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, the News Service reports. “Our belief is that production is the way to go.”
Gov. Charlie Baker agrees.
“Rent control will stifle the production on new housing,” Baker said last year. “That’s exactly the wrong direction we should go.”
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told WGBH Monday that although he does not necessarily support or oppose rent control — citing the need for more information — he supports bills that would leave it up to municipal leaders to decide.
“If we do it, we should let local authorities do it,” he said.
Renters’ rights groups rallied outside the State House.
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