YES
Nika Elugardo
State representative, Boston Democrat whose district includes portions of Boston’s Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, and Roslindale neighborhoods, and part of Brookline
My husband and I just bought our first home. It took 25 years to save, because our rents kept increasing by a lot. On top of that, down payments to get into the market kept going up. We were lucky. For many, rapidly rising rent means financial crisis or worse. The Commonwealth needs a modernized approach to this contemporary challenge.
Representative Mike Connolly and I co-filed H1378, the Tenant Protections Act (TPA). Most either cheer or moan heavily when they learn it’s the bill lifting the ban on rent control.
Whether from the political left or right, misunderstandings about TPA focus on the past. Cheerleaders want to run back into the loving arms of rent control as we once knew it. “Bemoaners” want to run away.
This is the wrong debate! Lifting the ban is critical, not because we want to go back to the way things were, but because we cannot go on the way things are.
The 27-year-old language of the ban is based on the belief that the public is best served by free market rental rates. We aren’t debating whether we should bring back 1980s rent control, but whether unconditionally unfettered rental markets are in the public interest today.
TPA strikes the antiquated total ban, replacing it with a new law whose stated purpose is “providing municipalities with a variety of flexible options to help address the housing emergency in a locally appropriate manner.” The local option measure invites municipalities to learn from the past and craft something better.
Learning from the past means never freezing rents, but capping annual increases at reasonable levels that allow for maintenance and profit. It means all owner-occupants of three-families or less remain exempt. Municipalities can expand this exemption. They can slow down rental increases temporarily or limit the scope to designated “anti-displacement zones.” They can regulate broker fees, or choose to do nothing.
My husband and I were lucky, but Massachusetts residents deserve better than the luck of the draw. TPA doesn’t solve affordable housing. It does give cities and towns the choice and options to prevent rents from skyrocketing during a crisis. We need this. Let’s lift the ban.
NO
Sherri Way
Real estate agent with Keller Williams in Framingham; past president of the Metrowest Property Owners Association; longtime landlord with 15 units in Metrowest and Worcester
In the 1960s and 1970s, rent control was adopted in Massachusetts and other states to provide affordable housing. It didn’t work for multiple reasons:
• Landlords were squeezed on their income and couldn’t do the necessary repairs and pay the increasing tax and utility bills.
• Tenants who lived in rent control units were not always low-income tenants. A mayor of Cambridge and a judge resided in rent control units.
• It depressed building values and therefore negatively impacted tax revenue for the cities and towns that had rent control.
After Massachusetts voters repealed rent control in the state in 1994, buildings were renovated to improve living conditions and many of the higher income tenants presumably left their rent-controlled apartments and bought condos and homes.
The problem of affordable housing is a complex one. Solving the affordable housing and housing insecurity problem requires that government, developers, tenants, advocacy organizations, and landlords work together. This has not happened in the past.
A significant portion of low-income housing is provided by small landlords and not large complexes. This is a small business. So why is this small business sector treated differently than other parts of the economy? Grocery stores are not required to lower their prices because of food insecurity. Gas stations don’t have maximum prices they can charge for gas. Clothing stores are not asked to sell their products at lower rates set by the government. So why do housing providers get different treatment?
Most small landlords do not have deep pockets. Every time the government negatively impacts landlords — especially small property owners — with new laws and guidelines, landlords either get out of the business or become more cautious when screening potential new tenants. This ultimately impacts the people that the government is supposedly trying to help — i.e. low-income tenants.
The solution is for all of us to work together to solve the problem. Make the laws fair for both tenants and landlords. Do not try to solve the problem by placing the financial burden only on the landlords. It didn’t work in the 1970s and ‘80s, so it is unclear why people think it will work again 40 years later.
As told to Globe correspondent John Laidler. To suggest a topic, please contact laidler@globe.com.
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