BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Boston City Councilors and affordable housing advocates gathered on City Hall Plaza in Boston Wednesday to rally in support of a 2026 ballot initiative that would bring rent control back to Massachusetts.
"The goal is to actually get rent control instituted here across the state," City Councilor Julia Mejia said at the rally, during which she and other councilors formerly announced their support for the initiative. "Back in the '90s, it was repealed, so we want to bring it back."
The ballot initiative would cap annual rent increases across the state at five percent. That limit would apply even when new renters move into a unit, meaning landlords would not be able to increase rent prices significantly between tenants.
Cole Gibson, organizing director of advocacy group Reclaim Roxbury, said rent control would "change everything."
"People will have futures again," Gibson said. "Youth might be a little less hopeless and feeling lonely because they'll feel like they have a path forward."
Critics, including non-profit MassLandlords, point to a state law that says communities may already institute rent control measures, so long as property owners are compensated for the difference between each unit's "fair market rent" and rent-controlled rent.
In a statement, MassLandlords said the ballot initiative would lead to "disinvestment in hundreds of thousands of rental properties and force their sale to developers over time."
"Developers will be exempt," the statement read. "They will not keep your crummy building. They will remove you and tear the building down to build a home for someone else and charge them full market rent."
WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas (@JamesRojasMMJ) reports.