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Data collection comes first in Walsh tenant plan

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If there’s any middle ground on the contentious issue of rent regulation in Boston, Mayor Walsh seems determined to find it. His plan, released on Monday, is the closest thing yet to a compromise between tenants worried about rising rents and landlords chafing at overregulation. The most important part of Walsh’s proposed ordinance would set up a system for generating more reliable data about evictions and displacement in the city, a crucial step that could help illuminate whether additional measures are needed.

There is essentially no current regulation in Boston, after a 1994 referendum abolished rent control for the two-thirds of residents who rent their homes. Once a lease is up, property owners have the right to raise the rent as much as they want, or simply ask tenants to leave, even if they've paid rent on time and taken care of the property. A no-fault eviction can follow, but some tenants will just leave without a fight, meaning their displacement may never show up in court records. Tenant-rights groups suspect the practice is rampant, and that landlords in hot real estate markets across the city are clearing buildings of low-income tenants, renovating the apartments, and then re-renting them at higher rates.

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The mayor's plan would require landlords who own seven or more rental units to notify the city whenever they decide not to renew a tenant's lease or to proceed with an eviction. That requirement isn't as cumbersome as it sounds: It basically means landlords would need to copy City Hall on paperwork they would have to complete anyway. With that data, city officials should be able to detect housing patterns in the city more clearly and fine-tune their housing policies in response.

"Data collection is really going to help us design programs and interventions," said Sheila A. Dillon, director of the city's Department of Neighborhood Development. If evictions or lease nonrenewals are on the rise in East Boston, for instance, the city will know in almost real time. The notifications would also allow the city to mail tenants information about their existing legal rights. "Right now there is no way to reach out to folks most in need in the city," Dillon said.

The rest of the plan Walsh released Monday — which would require landlords to have a reason for evicting tenants — may be necessary at some point. But there's a danger that it would just create more procedural hoops and hurdles for landlords without actually protecting tenants, who would gain no protection against rent increases. Imposing too much red tape carries risk, too. If regulations make it too burdensome to operate rental properties, fewer will get built, and the pressure on the remaining units will only increase. That would exacerbate the problem the policy is designed to solve.

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In the long run, the solution to housing instability is to build more housing. That's been the overall thrust of the mayor's housing policy, which calls for 53,000 new units in the city by 2030. The notification policy is a good step, but the best way to stop no-fault evictions would be to continue growing the housing market until landlords realize they need to think twice before throwing out a paying tenant.