2nd Hampden and Hampshire Senate Humason
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Thank you! My name is Don Humason. I’m the state senator for the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire that cities like Agawam, Granville – well, towns, too - but Agawam, Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield, Easthampton, as well as small towns like Southwick and Southampton, Granville, Russell, Tolland. My district is both urban and pretty suburban, so landlord issues come to play here in the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire District.
I’ve been the state senator for 3 years. I’m finishing up my second term, but my first full term. I’m running for reelection in the district starting in January for my second full term. I was a state representative before I was a senator, and before that I was a legislative aide to the previous state senator in the district, so I’ve been around state government here in Massachusetts and specifically in Worcester, Massachusetts, literally since 19991.
I’m a landlord myself. I own a rental property where my district office is located in Westfield. I’m happy to talk to your group, so thank you for the invitation.
Thank you. In respect to rent escrow in Massachusetts, I’ve been a supporter for a long time. Like I said before I was a senator, I was a state representative and there was a Republican state rep from West Springfield named Walter DeFilippi who filed bile this all the time. To me, it just makes sense if a tenant is going to complain that there is a problem with his property and not withhold the rent and not pay his rent, he should escrow that while the landlord has the opportunity to repair or address whatever issue it is, so that the landlord does not provide that rent.
That to me makes perfect sense and for whatever reason, the bill never saw the light of day out of the housing committee. It never came to the legislature for a chance for us to vote on it either in the house or the senate. It’s always been held up and I’m not sure if it’s an issue that specific legislators or the chairmen have with the bill or if there is some other problem, but to me if you want to promote rental housing in Massachusetts, you make it easier for landlords.
In my opinion, Massachusetts is a pretty hostile place to be a landlord in the state specially for residential tenancy. It’s largely that way because I think there’s a lot of landlords who are hesitant to rent to tenants, knowing that they could very well end up losing their property because their tenants could withhold their rent for an issue that isn’t even caused by the landlord but is often sadly caused by a tenant with some ulterior motives or some bad intent.
When I was a representative about 4 years ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with the housing court here in Worcester, Mass, and actually went down to Springfield for a whole day and shadowed two of the judges, Judge Fields and Judge Fein, and watched a couple of mediation sessions. I watched a bunch of sessions of the court with both judges throughout the day. At the end of the day, the judges said, “Hey, what do you think? Tell me about it?”
I said, “I’m absolutely horrified [laughter].” I said, “From my vantage point, you’re elbow on the bench, why would anybody ever want to be a landlord in the state?” The judges consistently gave the tenants who in my opinion 9 times out of 10 were looking to defraud their landlord, consistently gave them another chance they have to pay their rent, another month, another month, another month.
You know these poor landlords, from my perspective, were being deprived of rent revenue that they needed to pay the mortgages on their property, so my personal feeling was that this is a state that through its justice system is skewed toward tenants and in most cases bad tenants and landlords end up getting the short end of the stick, which unfortunately goes to why Massachusetts housing costs are so expensive because there aren’t more people willing to be landlords because they’ve heard the horror stories.
I’m a landlord myself and I remember my father. I was first going to buy a property and my father said, “Make sure you buy a two-family house and let the other renter help pay your mortgage.”
I said, “Dad, I’ve seen too many cases in my work for the state as Sen. Knapik’s chief of staff at the time where landlords are ending up losing their property because their tenants just weren’t paying and there was no escrow and there was no opportunity for them to recoup the costs, it took them months and sometimes years to get a bad tenant out, and in the end when they finally got their property free again, it was such in a total state of disrepair that they had to spend so much money just to bring the property back up. To me it was exceptionally unfair.”
I don't know. If the state wants to do better, we have lots of opportunities where we could whether that may mean changing up the housing committee in Boston or electing more landlord-friendly legislators. I would encourage both efforts.
[0:04:59]
Yeah, as I said, the district is very urban, very rural, and quite mixed. We have a lot of road and bridge projects here in my cities and towns. I have three gateway cities in the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire District, meaning that they’re older urban industrialized cities and their infrastructure has kind of fallen on hard times over the years because it hasn’t been maintained.
One of the most important things that we pass every year as a legislature every session is the road and bridge money that comes back to cities and towns are Chapter 90 appropriation. The Commonwealth, and actually to his credit, Gov. Baker, has increased the amount of distribution that goes back to cities and towns and also tried to work hard to get the money out to the cities early enough in the year, so that they can take advantage of the construction season instead of waiting until everything gets funded in the fall and then it has to shut down for the winter.
I think that’s important because everybody, all of our citizens drive on our roads and bridges, everybody in the cities, everybody in the rural parts of our district, and if we are focused on doing our best to make sure that our infrastructure is maintained and updated every time possible, that would be good for every one of our constituents.
I think it’s great I’ve spoken out on camera about how I was not familiar with this group because I’ve been in the legislature as a rep and senator for 14 years and before that as a staff person going back to 1991, so I’ve been around for a long time and there hasn’t been a group to really speak out and support the landlords and I think it’s a really great idea that there is now. I think you should be doing, if I could offer advice, you should be doing as many meetings with legislators or groups of legislators as possible and using real examples, bringing in real landlords and demonstrating where the problems are.
I think if you appeal to fairness and say, “Look, if you are a landlord, this was the situation impacting you, do you think it was fair?” I think only then will you be able to move the legislative process in Boston further along.
Again, for whatever reason, it hasn’t happened. I’m not going to say it’s due to particular members of the legislature or people in powerful positions, but yeah, if you follow the evidence maybe it is. But by appealing to legislators and educating them as a group, I think you’re going to have a good shot. I congratulate you on forming.
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