Supporters of bills that would lift the ban on rent control in Massachusetts flocked to Beacon Hill Tuesday to ask legislators to pass them, with the hope of easing housing prices and preventing rent hikes.
During a hearing of the Joint Committee on Housing, elected officials, advocates and tenants spoke of the effects of the housing crisis, many sharing stories of their own struggles to afford monthly rent.
“We often see rent increases of $500 to $1,000 per month, usually following a property being sold for cash to a large multi-state corporation,” Sen. Pat Jehlen, D-2nd Middlesex, who sponsored one of the bills, said during the hearing, adding that major rent hikes can be equivalent to an eviction for low-income people.
Rent control was banned in Massachusetts in 1994 by a ballot question. Multiple bills are currently before the legislature to give municipalities the local option to enact it, including one that was before the committee on Tuesday.
At a rally outside the State House Tuesday morning, Rep. Sam Montaño, D-15th Suffolk, one of the original sponsors of the bill, said rent control was a moral obligation for the state.
“This is not an issue about the market. This is not an issue about how we use capitalism. This is an issue about morals,” Montaño said. “People need homes, they need a warm place to sleep, they need a place to shower, they need a place to feel safe, and we are failing and providing that for people by allowing landlords to try to charge huge increases year to year and constantly displacing people.”
Laura Frost, an Arlington resident, told rent control supporters at the rally that she, like others in her apartment building, had lived there for decades. The original owners of the building, a family, wanted to keep their tenants, so they would only raise rents by 2 to 3% each year.
However, in 2019, the building was bought by a large developer which began renovating vacant units and charging almost double the previous rents, Frost said.
“The rapid escalation in housing costs is caused as much by speculators scooping up previously affordable units and converting them as it is by not enough housing. Rent control is not the only answer, but it would eliminate the incentive for that,” she said. “They know this will cause displacement of long-term renters whose lives are integrated into the local community … but they have a profit model to advance and they won’t relent.”
Some communities have already tried to implement their own rent control policies. During the hearing, legislators heard from supporters of a home rule petition passed by the Boston City Council in March that would cap annual rent increases at multifamily buildings at 6% plus the annual change in the Consumer Price Index, with a maximum of 10%.
Boston Chief of Housing Sheila Dillon said that the city is doing everything it can to increase the supply of affordable housing, but that it wouldn’t be able to build its way out of the housing crisis.
“We’re seeing residents, many of them who have built this city, being pushed out every single day as they can no longer afford to live here,” Dillon said. “People have lived in their units for decades but there’s little we can do without additional tenant protections.”
In the town of Athol, town meeting voters overwhelmingly passed a rent control measure two years ago, which also has yet to make it past Beacon Hill. Residents of the small Central Massachusetts town, many seniors on Social Security, said Tuesday that constant rent increases were making it difficult to impossible to stay in their homes.
While the majority of voices were in support of rent control, there were some against it. Most of these identified themselves as small landlords and said rent control would hurt not just their income but their tenants, by disincentivizing developers from building new units and driving up housing costs anyway.
“It makes it more difficult for owners to keep up with rising operating costs,” said Small Property Owners Association Vice President Amir Shahsavari. “It leads to the disrepair of housing and makes it nearly impossible to remove noncompliant tenants not only to the detriment of owners and their properties but also to other tenants.”
Supporters, however, rejected these arguments, with some even booing speakers who were against rent control.
“People come to Massachusetts not because they want to have a friendly business climate. People come to Massachusetts because they know we protect people,” Montaño said. “They know we have access to health care. They know we have LGBTQ rights protections. Now they want to come here because we’re going to protect people who need housing.”
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