My name is Michael Prentky. I have been living in Somerville since 2018 and I’m proud to be an in-demand musician and music educator here. My job is creating noise through music. Now I’m making noise about the housing epidemic, and I ask that you listen.
I am being evicted at no fault, something that will mar my reputation as a tenant for the rest of my life. My new landlord, an investor from California with 10 other investment properties, bought my building recently. He raised my rent by 60 percent with no material improvements and gave me 30 days to agree to that price or leave. Thirty days is an impossible amount of time to continue my life obligations, find a new apartment and pack up my home of six years. He refused to negotiate in good faith for lower rent and decided to evict my partner and me. This struggle has resulted in eight months of prolonged intense stress affecting my psychological well-being. His inhumane, undignified actions are technically legal. He is using our legal system, which leaves tenants at a massive disadvantage, as designed.
It has been 30 years since Massachusetts overturned rent control, and the results are clear. Between 2004 to 2018, investors spent roughly $114 billion on residential real estate in Greater Boston. This land grab has been pandemonium for those actually living here – a lack of tenant protections has eroded the fabric of our communities and led to unfathomable evictions, homelessness, displacement, instability and brain drain. According to masslandlords.net, in Eastern Massachusetts alone, there have been between 200 and 700 evictions per month since October 2020. How much trauma and instability has been sowed on thousands of evicted people since 1994 when rent control was overturned?
This tragic Monopoly game is affecting thousands all over the state and country with countless investors just like my landlord. In Monopoly, this is where the game ends, but in reality there seems to be no “game over.” Poor folks’ lives are continually disregarded as they bounce from one investor’s property to the next. “Do not pass Go, do not collect $200”… All my friends are waiting anxiously for their apartments to get flipped. Many are leaving the area.
Marginalized people have been sounding alarms about the crisis for decades. But the crisis has grown further, reaching those of us who thought we were safe. I fall outside the stereotypical and misinformed picture of an evicted tenant: I’m a cis, white male, I was raised upper-middle class and I have a master’s degree. Despite my immense societal privileges, I too am being affected by the housing crisis.
So let me make an appeal to politicians and changemakers. I want to focus on a segment of poor folks that you might (regrettably) appreciate more – artists. Artists are poor folks too, but instead of doing invisible, thankless labor, we do very public work with a veneer of glamor. Our contributions influence people’s decision to live in any given area. Despite being a fraction the size of New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago, Boston’s arts scene punches well-above its weight. In 2019 alone, the arts brought $2 billion in revenue to Boston. But giving speculative investors the green light to treat our homes like stocks is driving artists out of the city en masse. Every year more friends trickle away; I’ve watched this happen for 14 years. You are losing a huge financial asset and a spiritual boon to the city.
Governor Maura Healey, mayors Wu, Ballantyne and Simmons – your neighbors and fellow Massachusetts residents have been sounding the alarm. We need rent control now. California, New York, Washington, D.C., and many other U.S. cities have it. The results of this experiment of rolling back rent control are clear. Poor folks are in perpetual crisis and it is self-immolating our cities. It is truly the root of so many broader issues – mental health instability, homelessness, economic stagnation and diminished quality of life. It is unsustainable, inhumane and sucking the life out of Massachusetts. Do better or watch us suffer and leave.
Michael Prentky, Somerville
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
For any residents in Cambridge’s 25th Middlesex District: Evan MacKay has rent control as a pillar of their electoral platform. Marjorie Decker supports corporations and slumlords, Evan MacKay supports the people such as yourself Michael. Vote this coming Tuesday
I am ambivalent on whether rent control works, but I do know we need to keep artists and musicians and teachers in our communities. We desperately need to get rid of absentee landlords, especially those from out of town and out of state. Ban them? Tax them? I do t know but something has to change and it’s not just building more ugly buildings.
1) Who is Ryan?
2) No fault eviction does NOT “mar your reputation”. It does not appear on credit reports, it does not appear on background checks, it is not part of any public record. It is a legal process to ensure that when the terms of the lease which both parties agreed to expired, the occupant will leave the premise. It is the ONLY course action an owner has to ensure timely move-outs.
Rent control of some sort seems the only option that can be pressed into place in regards to properties changing ownership, at the least. Otherwise there will be no actual long term residents here, just Investment Fund, Hedge Fund, Speculator and scam artists owning the property.
A maximum rent increase limit on properties to say 10% of existing rents for occupied properties for at least a year after the purchase (and a mortarium on resale for at least a year) would seem a survivable limit to avoid destroying lives in this economy.
10% per year is still insanely high, way over inflation, and since it would be compounding would mean rent could double every 7ish years. Rent control needs to be capped at or below inflation and any cost increases shouldn’t just be standard but should have to correspond to specific costs. Landlords are currently raising rents far beyond their rating costs and their profits are expanding massively while people are displaced.
I feel for Michael Prentky and all of the artists and other renters in this terrible situation. We have a housing crisis and have done far too little to address it on the state or local level.
Municipalities lack the power to institute rent control or stabilization. Mayor Wu proposed a rent stabilization measure, as has Somerville, and they went nowhere in the state legislature, and got almost no co-sponsors. Rep. Connolly tried to gather signatures for a statewide ballot initiative that also fell far short.
The solution municipalities control is zoning reform to build enough apartments that we create housing abundance and landlords have to compete for tenants and can’t jack up rents. While it may feel like an impossible concept in Mass, it’s basically the only thing proven to work, and you see rents going down in Austin and other places that actually build lots of housing.
What is happening to Michael only happens in places like Greater Boston where local zoning blocks building new apartments, which leads to apartment vacancy levels that are way too low, giving investors and landlords the power to keep jacking up rents, often even for apartments that are not in good condition. Even those who can afford high rents pay too high of a share of their income (which drives a lot of young people who grow up here to leave), and those who are least able to pay end up overcrowded or even homeless.
I realize @Slaw that 10% is extremely generous, but I chose that number as it was something clear cut, finite and would be actually Less than some of the numbers I have heard from folks who are forced out of their residences (30% increases after a building purchase has not been unheard of in recent years!).