Mayor pushing rent control
Mayor Michelle Wu has filed her rent-control proposal, sticking to the previously floated rent caps and setting up what’s expected to be a tough fight to get it through both the city council and state Legislature.
Wu filed the home-rule petition on Monday to be formally introduced on Wednesday. The bill to implement rent control, a controversial policy she touted during her mayoral campaign, will be set for hearings at a later date.
Wu’s proposal is seeking to cap year-over-year rent increases at 6% plus consumer price index increases, to a max of 10%.
The protections would not carry over between tenants. That’s called “vacancy decontrol,” a rule that would not limit rent hikes to a new tenant over what the previous one was charged.
New construction would be exempt from the caps for the first 15 years. The city would improve a rental registry and tighten just-cause eviction rules.
Exemptions also include buildings with six or fewer units where one of the occupants is the owner.
Also in the proposal are sections that would give the city permission to pass two further types of laws: one to regulate condo conversions, and the other to require relocation assistance to tenants told to leave because the building is being demolished or renovated.
Many of these details began to leak out last month. Voters banned rent control by statewide referendum nearly three decades ago, so this proposal as a home-rule petition would need Beacon Hill approval, where the powers that be, while Democrats, are generally not as left as Wu, who’s in the middle of trying to move ahead on multiple big-swing progressive issues she ran on.
“This Home Rule Petition will enable the City of Boston to implement rent stabilization to better protect families from displacement caused by exorbitant increases in rent,” Wu wrote in a letter accompanying the bill. “The measure would place needed limits on rapid rent increases to existing tenancies and ensure more stability for Boston residents by providing a level of certainty regarding bow much their rent could increase each year.”
She said tenants in Boston are often “victim to steep rent increases” with average jumps of 14% in 2022. Wu, who called the concept “rent stabilization” on the campaign trail and since coming into office, said this policy is based on others in places like California.
Real estate associations too have panned the measure, saying it would limit new construction amid a housing shortage.
“Rent control, also known as rent stabilization, is a proven failure,” the Greater Boston Real Estate Board wrote in a missive it fired out a few hours after the news broke of the new filing from Wu.