Rent Control Hearing Tuesday, July 29 (194 S.1447 Jehlen, Gomez)
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A hearing has been scheduled for a rent control bill filed by Senators Jehlen and Gomez, S.1447 "An Act enabling cities and towns to stabilize rents and protect tenants." The hearing will be Tuesday, July 29, at 1 p.m.. The deadline to register to testify via zoom is Monday, July 28, at 3 p.m. Click the hearing link to register.
To submit written testimony, write a letter on company or personal letterhead and email hello@masslandlords.net subject: Rent control testimony, by 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 29. We will collate and submit testimony.
This bill would hold rent increases to rents 12 months ago, even for recently renovated properties.
Optional: Click or tap the coversheet to read our 86 pages of testimony:
Summary:
Rent control would help the people who have an apartment when the bill passed into law. It would hurt everyone else forever after.
The main problems with S.1447 are as follows:
It would cost Massachusetts half a billion at least.
Rent control lowered assessed values and real estate tax revenue. Rent control reduced the budget of each town that adopted rent control. This resulted in that town siphoning State Aid from surrounding non-controlled towns and lowering their budgets.
Rent control worsened discrimination.
Rent control has an unintended disparate impact on the basis of race. It creates "availability discrimination" where landlords hold apartments vacant longer waiting for a "perfect" application.
Cambridge residents who obtained rent-controlled units included Massachusetts Superior Judicial Court Judge Ruth Abrams (left); Prince Frederik of Denmark, a Harvard graduate student at the time (center); and Cambridge Mayor Kenneth Reeves, who lived in a rent-controlled apartment from his undergraduate Harvard days in the 1970s beyond 1994 (right). Images: Ruth Abrams public mass dot gov; Frederik cc by-sa Wikimedia Aarhus uni; Ken Reeves editorial use spoa.
A fair version of rent control is already allowed under Chapter 40P.
If a town wants rent control, they have to pay for what it truly costs.
Rent Control in Boston would take us back to the middle of the 20th century when towns subsidized this terrible policy. Derivative of Licensed Unsplash
Rent control lowered the ability of property owners to maintain and renovate buildings. It resulted in hundreds of boarded up buildings across Boston and Cambridge.
Policies interpreted and applied by rent control boards in Boston discouraged development of new buildings, improvement of existing buildings and basic upkeep of rental units. The result was too often scenes like this, in Southie. Image: public domain.
Rent control created unevictable professional tenants, who drove out good landlords and good renters.
Under the "just cause eviction" rules of S.1447, renters could not be evicted for "no cause stated." This makes it impossible to protect good renters from violent offenders. There is no witness protection program in civil matters.
Landlords Emil and Donna Javorski were convicted of a crime for not living in their house and not filing a change of address form. Supporters of rent control today are either profoundly uneducated or barbarous.
Rent control was tried in Massachusetts in 1994. It failed.
Rent control had disastrous social impact on landlords. Peter Petrillo died because of rent control. George Tarvezian was jailed for six months. The Bolognas were bankrupted. Many others were harmed, all documented. Naturally occurring affordable housing disappeared.
Peter Petrillo died of a heart attack after being ordered by the Cambridge rent control board to jack up this building. This intersection was named for him and his widow. CC BY-SA 4.0 MassLandlords EricB
Can they freeze rents from 12 months ago?
This law holds rents relative to their value 12 months ago for the purpose of an increase. This means any rent that increased faster than CPI or 5%, including renovated units, will be unable to increase rent again until inflation has eaten away at the improvement.
A dilapidated building that was 50% below market and has now been gut renovated to market will be unable to raise rents for at least 9 years, whatever inflation may be the next nine years. The math is the maximum allowable rate, 5%, compounded for n years, must meet or exceed the 50% appreciation from 12 months prior to the law's passage. 1.05 ^ 8 = 1.47, and 1.05 ^ 9 = 1.55.
Nine years must therefore elapse before the 50% rent increase is met. If inflation were only 2% per year, that will lower the maximum allowable rate. The landlord would then have to wait 21 years for a rent increase. Assuming Senators Jehlen and Gomez understand math, we have to conclude they have cruel intentions.
Read the text for yourself:
State House website slow? Download the full text from MassLandlords.
Read about Massachusetts' failed experiment with rent control:
The housing crisis is real, but rent control was tried and failed. Join us in our mission to create better rental housing!
Just keep paying taxes thus enabling those who harm you. MA housing providers will never learn. Voting, talking, writing to politicians will get you no where.
This bill seeks to protect tenants at the cost of ctizens who have scraped and saved and bought properties that provide shelter for people and at the same time provide a financial reward at the end of their wnership which often provides for their wn children and grandchildren. What other businesses have restrictions on what an owner can charge for their product or service. You have to think hard to come up with examples because they are so rare and specialized…. There are no examples to be found at the “retail” level. Yes their is a housinf crisis and the legisalture and governor have begum to put the force of government to citied and towns who host rail travel by exanding zoning to provide for denser housing.. This type of bill will dampen the interest of owners and developers…. There are many other reasons this bill is not going to help the housin crisis at hand nor should property owners, large and small have theor ownershipo rights intefered with in this way….
Rent control is not the way to help people find good apartments to rent at a reasonable price. With just a little information, we know that each city has a form of “Affordable Housing” which in truth is supporting SLUM LORDS STATE WIDE. Yes there are some “Fair” property owners out there, but not many. We live in Malden, Ma 30 years now, own a three family home with fair which we also have lived in over these 30 years, and we offer affordable rents compared to the neighborhood and surrounding Malden areas, we do not have to worry as our rents are below today’s market. Honestly, we are surrounded by homes that are owned by absentee landlords, slumlords that do not live on the property and charge outrageous rents, allow overcrowded living conditions and for some reason get away with these practices.
BUT If rent control is brought back into the State, major cities that have “Honest Landlords” will suffer greatly. After the Covid-19 debaucle, Honest Landlords all over this state have suffered at the hands of WOKE city and state officials putting rent freezes on homes, not allowing evictions of the less than kind renters or professional renters from ANTIFA or BLM, involved in crushing Honest folks whom have worked very hard to buy a home, offer reasonable rents, maintain their properties and at the same time, pay extreemly high taxes to support a sanctuary state that has gone WOKE.
Thanks for the research regarding all this.
My wife and I have owned and managed a 6 family in JP for 49 years. When an apartment is available, we rent at market rate. After that, for at least 10 years, WE NEVER RAISE THE RENT. When our tenants leave, they often have been able to save enough money to buy their own home.
We have lived through rent control, it was awful. If your rents were low when rent control went into effect, you were screwed. There was no way to provide quality housing being so constrained.
Argentina: A Cautionary Tale of Rent Control Failure
In 2020, Argentina passed strict rent control legislation mandating three-year leases, caps on annual rent increases, and bans on foreign currency payments. Initially celebrated as a win for tenants, the real-world result was a sharp contraction in rental housing supply, as many landlords chose to remove properties from the market altogether. By 2023, one in seven homes in Buenos Aires stood vacant, and rental availability plummeted.
When President Javier Milei repealed the rent control law in December 2023, the market responded immediately:
Rental listings surged by over 170% within months — showing how much supply had been artificially withheld under rent control.
Real rental prices (adjusted for inflation) fell by as much as 40%, giving renters more choices at more affordable rates.
Landlords and tenants were once again free to negotiate terms that fit both parties — including payment in foreign currency, shorter leases, and flexible adjustments to inflation.
These outcomes confirm what economists have warned for decades: rent control reduces supply, discourages maintenance and new construction, and ultimately drives up long-term costs for renters.
If you’re really not profiting then sell the place. Figure it out! Owning a property, let alone several, is a privilege. We all work hard and pinch pennies, it’s the playing field that’s uneven. Signed, the majority.
@Renters and people who care – If you’re really paying too much rent, move. Figure it out! We all work hard and pinch pennies, including non-venture-capital landlords, many of whom were originally renters themselves.