Mayor Michelle Wu’s long-discussed rent-control plans are beginning to take shape in a way largely aimed at capping year-over-year rent increases at a maximum of 10% or below.
The administration presented the details, first reported by The Boston Globe, to Wu’s Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee this week, but there isn’t yet any concrete proposal. The idea is for the the committee and administration to continue to chew this over over the next several weeks before the city eventually puts a proposal before the city council.
The city’s official channels and other sources confirmed the summary of the details to the Herald. The top line at this point would be that the law would look to cap year-over-year rent increases at 6% plus consumer price index increases to a max of 10%.
The protections would not carry over between tenants. That’s called “vacancy decontrol,” a rule that would not limit rent hikes to a new tenant over what the previous one was charged.
New construction would be exempt from the caps for the first 15 years. The city would improve a rental registry and tighten just-cause eviction rules.
“We continue to work with the advisory committee toward specific legislative language that would protect families from rent gouging and displacement as our city continues to grow,” a Wu spokesman said in a statement. “We look forward to receiving additional stakeholder feedback before filing a proposal with the city council.”
Reinstituting rent control — or “rent stabilization,” as Wu calls it — was a staple of her campaign to be mayor. This past spring, she rolled out her advisory committee with the goal of having a firm proposal around the start of this year.
Any law like this would need the sign-off of the Legislature and governor.
The state outlawed rent control by referendum in 1994, but proponents say it can potentially be a good way to try to rein in pricy Boston rents. What it actually means varies from person to person and government to government. Back before it was outlawed, the controls were much tighter than what Wu is now proposing; what she’s talking about is more in line with other states like Oregon and California, which have percent increases tied to inflation or similar metrics.
The actual average rent in Boston is something of a moving target, as some websites that look at such stats put a one-bedroom around $2,500, while the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey has it at a median of $1,783 from 2017 to 2021.
Josh Zakim, a former city councilor who’s a member of Wu’s rent-control task force, praised the city staff and his fellow members for their research on this “complicated” issue and told the Herald that the goal of whatever the final legislation is should be to “prevent displacement without discouraging new housing production.”
Opponents of rent control say it can pull the rug out from housing production, particularly if the provisions are too tight.
Skip Schloming, who until recently was head of the Small Property Owners Association and a longtime foe of rent control efforts, told the Herald that this will make privately built and maintained low- and moderate-income housing untenable to maintain.
“We’re going to lose it” in favor of more big, expensive projects, he said.
He also said the “vacancy decontrol” provision just creates an incentive for landlords to churn through renters, not renewing leases so they can jump way up between tenants.
“It’s going to push tenants out and rents up,” he said.
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