Colin A. Young
State House News Service
Leaders of a ballot law push have agreed to abandon their statewide rent control question if lawmakers by July 1 pass legislation allowing cities and towns to individually decide whether to impose a cap on rent increases.
The Keep Massachusetts Home campaign sent the Legislature a proposal Tuesday that it said was developed with input from real estate industry representatives, including the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, WinnCompanies, Lupoli Companies, The HYM Investment Group, and The Builder Coalition.
The ballot committee opposing the initiative petition said it has had no direct talks on the matter and suggested others in the industry still have problems with what has been pitched as a compromise.
"While we made significant concessions in an effort to reach a true compromise, this legislation would achieve our primary goals of ending the state’s ban on rent control and enabling strong protections from excessive rent hikes and unjust evictions for Massachusetts residents," said Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts, the coalition that leads the ballot question campaign to eliminate the state's ban on rent control.
The negotiated proposal would allow cities and towns to opt into a rent control policy by majority vote of their legislative bodies. That policy would cap annual increases at the lower of either 10% or the increase in CPI plus 5%. The proposal includes many of the same exemptions as the ballot question, but would also allow property owners to reset rents to market rate upon vacancy and would open the door to rent control boards.
It also appears to include a provision that could shield it from future attempts to again outlaw rent control policies. The language includes a section that declares that, should the Legislature make any material changes to the compromise policy once in effect, any local rent control ordinance adopted under it "shall remain in effect with original terms unchanged, until and unless the city or town adopts the amended provision or provisions" by a supermajority vote of its governing body.
The ballot campaign said the language it shared Tuesday should replace the text of legislation (H 2328 / S 1447) pending in the Committee on Housing and Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government, respectively, to "eliminate the need for a costly and contentious ballot campaign."
"The legislation is currently being reviewed by other members of the real estate industry and we expect more will agree to support this path," the group said.
But the Housing for Massachusetts committee formed to oppose the ballot question said that, from its perspective, "no compromise has been reached on rent control."
"We were formally contacted by the Yes campaign on Sunday with language that differs from the proposed ballot question, including sections that remain problematic for housing creation and communities," spokesman Conor Yunits said. "In good faith we will review their proposal, but the materials they sent us also differ from what they sent the press today."
The opposition campaign is funded by groups including Massachusetts Association of Realtors, National Association of Realtors, Equity Residential, and AvalonBay Communities.
House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said Tuesday he didn't yet know where everyone involved in the rent control debate stood on the proposal.
"From what I hear, there's a lot more people involved in this conversation just than the folks that actually kind of made the agreement," he said.
Opposition emerged Tuesday afternoon from the Fiscal Alliance Foundation.
"This isn’t a course correction, it’s a tactical retreat. Even in its revised form, this policy discourages new housing, adds legal risk for property owners, will increase residential property taxes, and ultimately makes the affordability crisis worse for the very people it claims to help," spokesman Paul Craney said.n entering into it," he said.
A relatively small number of cities and towns have repeatedly sent local option rent control proposals to the Legislature for years but those proposals have never received state clearance.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents to a recent poll said they would definitely or probably vote to approve a ballot question imposing statewide rent control. The Polity Research Consulting poll of 608 registered voters was conducted between April 29 and May 7 for the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.