Letter from the Executive Director for October 2024: MassLandlords Elections

In September we continued to develop our website and focused on our new recorded event format, described in this edition. Meanwhile, Mass Save continues to move toward a needed expansion for rental housing. Finally, October will bring to us our own MassLandlords elections, before the federal elections. We will discuss all this and how team health presently shapes what we do.

Our website went through two successful updates in September. We retain two part-time developers in order to keep us protected against security vulnerabilities and to develop new features. Approximately 500 of us since May have experienced billing delays because of a vendor. These were all corrected as of Sept. 17. We have also been working to automate our weekly digest and prepare for the eventual rollout of monthly dues.

I continue to hold a non-voting stakeholder seat on the Energy Efficiency Advisory Council Equity Working Group. This is a state body that influences the Mass Save three-year plan, which is being reimagined for 2025 to 2027. The final plan is that Mass Save should cover all of the costs of weatherization, electrification and barrier removal for certain rental housing in 21 so-named “designated equity communities.” In these places this would solve the “split incentive problem,” where landlords are unable to borrow to make upgrades that basically only reimburse renters and the public at large. This would be approved for implementation in the February timeframe.

We have two full-time team members dealing with long-term illness at time of writing. The Board of Directors may be called in to help. For this reason, nominees for our October election have been informed of the above-average workload anticipated. We may have uncontested elections this time around. If so, we will engage otherwise willing nominees in non-critical volunteering (committee-type work). It takes a lot to volunteer for MassLandlords on top of having a business and a personal life. We will be glad to have board continuity as we work through the present difficulties and to expand our volunteer team with a committee.

Thank you for supporting our mission to create better rental housing. We've got your back only because you've got ours. Please join as a member, encourage others to join, become a property rights supporter or increase your level of support. We aim to hire both a full-time educator and policy advocate.

Sincerely,

Douglas Quattrochi

Executive Director

MassLandlords, Inc.