Rent control question moves toward 2024 ballot, but Connolly and allies face giant task to get it on
State Rep. Mike Connolly at a press conference in front of the State House in Boston on Wednesday. (Photo: Matt Rocha)
A ballot initiative that could bring back rent control and establish other tenant protections was certified Wednesday morning by attorney general Andrea Campbell, followed by a rally and press conference outside the State House by state Rep. Mike Connolly.
The initiative, if it ends up on the 2024 ballot and is approved by voters, would overturn the successful 1994 initiative that banned rent control in the commonwealth and replace it with a law giving communities the power to regulate rents and evictions, among other things. The petition exempts buildings younger than 15 years and two- or three-family, owner-occupied buildings.
Connolly’s petition was one of 34 that Campbell certified Wednesday. Other petitions included plans to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, increase the minimum wage for tipped workers and remove the MCAS standardized test as a graduation requirement for high school students.
“I’m really grateful to say that attorney general Campbell has certified our petition to proceed to the next step of the ballot process,” Connolly said.
That next step will be collecting signatures — a lot of them. By Dec. 6, Connolly and his allies must collect 75,574 signatures, or 3 percent of the votes cast in the commonwealth’s 2022 gubernatorial election. If the petition hits the signature threshold, it will head to the Massachusetts General Court in January.
Connolly is confident that voters will recognize the importance of this issue.
“We’re here because we’re facing an unprecedented housing crisis. Never in our history has homelessness been this pervasive. Never in our history has affordable housing been this out of reach for so many people,” he said. “This housing emergency is displacing people from our communities. It’s pushing out vulnerable seniors and children.”
Much work ahead
The amount of work facing rent-control advocates can’t be underestimated, said Denise Jillson, who was president of an organization called the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition in the 1990s, when it succeeded in overturning rent control laws in Cambridge, Boston and Brookline. “Can you imagine?” she said Thursday by phone. “That was before email.”
“These guys have an incredible amount of work to do,” Jillson said. “I know how difficult it is to get certified signatures and the heap of work it is going to take to get it done.”
Reaction to the petition’s policy goals was referred to Jefferson Smith, a political organizer for the nonprofit now carrying forward the work opposing rent control, the Massachusetts Housing Coalition. A voice mail was left with Smith on Thursday.
The MHC is led by a four-member board of directors that includes attorney and developer Sean Hope; Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association; attorney and landlord Charles R. Laverty III; and developer Ben Deb.
Political issue
On Wednesday, Connolly was accompanied at the press conference by other local leaders, including state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, Somerville City Council president Ben Ewen-Campen and Somerville city councilor at-large Willie Burnley Jr.
“[The housing crisis] is the single biggest issue in our community,” Ewen-Campen said.
Representatives from affordable-housing and tenant advocacy groups also accompanied Connolly at the press conference.
Cambridge City Council candidate Dan Totten said rent control is an important part of his platform.
“Rent control, for me, is everything,” Totten said. “The only way we can address the affordability crisis in the city is to put a cap on the degree to which landlords can raise rent.”
Totten pointed out Boston and Somerville, both of which have submitted home rule petitions on rent control, as communities from which Cambridge could learn. “We need to build on the work in Boston and Somerville to figure out what makes sense in Cambridge,” Totten said.
Activists engage
Duane Callender, co-chair of the Alliance of Cambridge Tenants, said that Cambridge’s affordability crisis spans income levels: middle-income residents struggle alongside lower-income residents. He would like to see rent control passed in some form, whether at the state or city level.
“We can work together to make housing affordable for all people,” Callender said.
Bill Cunningham, also of the Alliance of Cambridge Tenants, would like to see candidates in the upcoming City Council elections address rent control.
“I would like to see somebody making a specific proposal,” Cunningham said. “Even those who said they supported rent control in the past didn’t put anything forward once they got in.”
I don’t see how rent control will pass by ballot question unless everything in the universe is going perfectly well for progressives in 2024. If the electorate is even remotely cranky about anything, they’ll vote this down.
Also– I was there when we had rent control pre-1994, and never want to go back. I’ve voted for Connolly before but not any longer, because of this.
“The petition exempts buildings younger than 15 years and two- or three-family, owner-occupied buildings.”
EDIT: Probably don’t want a comma between “three-family” and “owner-occupied buildings”. Although a typo like that in the final language of the petition will make for some interesting court fights.
——
Sooooooo just single family homes and run down apartment complexes?
On the plus side, it will drive up the price of 2-3 units since they will be protect. (Pending the result of my imaginary court case above)
Single home owners will either vote against it or gamble on developer bidding up their properties to build 2-3.
Long-term residents in run-down apartment complexes will be displaced as developers rush to tear them down and rebuild. (I’m looking at you Bishop Allen Drive)
And the whole “owner-occupied” thing is a total joke in Cambridge. My mom’s upstairs neighbors haven’t lived in there for more than 15 years. But they still get the tax exemption.
How do we know? Because Mom opens tax notices the mail man just leaves on the floor of the buildings mail room.
And then the state will be right back where it started.
Are we SURE Mikey doesn’t work for developers?
And conflating homeless with housing prices is absurd. Without meaningful intervention of all the co-morbid issues most won’t agree to leave the streets.
Just this past weekend, I was forced to go back to Central Scare. On Saturday there was a big pile of trash on the curb of Mass Ave due to the annual migration of the academic locust. Right smack dab in the middle of that trash was an older man, clearly addled for reasons unknown.
I then had to come back on Labor Day (Monday).
The trash was still there. And guess what? So was the man, sitting in the same spot.
But yeah, rent control will TOTALLY solve his issues.
Most of Cambridge disagreed with you at the time. Like Boston and the other cities that actually had rent control Cambridge voted to keep it then. What a privileged position you have to reflect on it that way.
I can support rent control, if it doesn’t have that “new Builds” clause mentioned in the news story… I want restrictions on those developers that are coming in and trying to take over the city and make it into their playground for hedge fund investments that crash the economy a few years out like they have done in other places around the world.
I also think the city needs to have some new ordinances to deal with vacant properties… like a 2 year rule, so that they seize by eminent domain such vacant properties to be turned into affordable housing units rather than have developers buy things up and leave them vacant for years hoping to drive down prices to snatch things up and raze an area of the city for new high rises.