Letter from the Executive Director for April 2017

This month we’ll recap our first quarter achievement -- a major upgrade to our rental forms -- and look to our second quarter goal.

In March we announced the completion of the first Springfield rental forms review. The rental forms have now been reviewed by attorneys in Worcester, Boston, and Springfield. Best practices from each court system have been incorporated into our lease, tenancy-at-will, and optional clauses. Overall feedback has been very positive. Not only did we eliminate legal jargon, but also we included protections against AirBnB, marijuana growing, just cause eviction, and fire. We are aware that our old pet form, which has not been updated, remains confusing. Do not charge pet rent. Do not take a pet deposit. We will address this form next.

Our second quarter goal is to make a substantial improvement to the message boards. We still don’t know whether this means changing the way Google Groups operates or switching to a different service. See the related article in this edition, “Message Board Revamp.” The message boards are an essential connection between members and service providers. We hope to finish this work by the end of June, but if we need more time to do it right, we will take longer.

Members who have been with us for a long time can also look forward to an improvement to our billing and renewal systems. As we have grown, we have graduated from error-prone services to fully integrated systems. We now have just one method to process credit cards on the website. In another month we will start mailing print invoices to members without a card on file thirty days prior to renewal. This will help eliminate membership service interruptions. We will continue to have slow registration desks until we can integrate a point-of-sale system.

Our years of hard work are paying off. We are nearly ready to start enrolling new chapters again. We have serious interest from two potential groups. We have warm introductions to two more. Our stretch goal is to end this year with over 1,700 members active and in good standing, and to have a presence at events in 9 locations. Based on our April 1 membership count, these goals are still realistic.

MassLandlords has grown to the point where we are able to influence policy a very little. Our April Fools satire of Mayor Marty Walsh was critical of his political pandering, and our public records request caught him in a political lie. Mayor Walsh is probably a lovely person, but he didn’t involve us in his decision-making processes. Over the last year, he has met with tenant groups while his staff have systematically declined our requests to meet. We want to be centrist and pragmatic, but we do not want to be ignored. Every indication is that Just Cause Eviction will fall if we keep pushing on it.
Thanks to your support, and sharing the word about our work, we will continue to grow into our mission: creating better rental housing in Massachusetts by helping owners rent their property and advocating for better laws. You can accelerate the latter by becoming a Property Rights Supporter, masslandlords.net/property.

Sincerely,
Doug Quattrochi
dquattrochi@masslandlords.net