Letter from the Executive Director for January 2026: The Year We Fight Rent Control

December was the rent control fundraiser month. But we continued building toward the future with website improvements, Mass Save and more.

In December we built on my successful rent control opposition speech in Worcester. We started the rent control fundraiser tour in earnest. I visited Pittsfield, New Bedford, Salem, Lexington, Haverhill, Dorchester and Holyoke. I will visit Fitchburg, Southbridge and Marlborough in the first five weeks of the 2026. And then if necessary, I will go back around again. This is physically very demanding; I normally work a full day starting around 7 a.m. On days with an evening event, I have to work 15 hours in a day. I sincerely appreciate everyone who participated and will participate.

Special recognition should go to the Holyoke group, who had the highest attendance at 52 attendees and the highest single-night raise so far at over $16,000.

We have been in close touch with the Greater Boston Real Estate Board coalition, which includes the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and NAIOP. They have formed a rent control ballot opposition committee. All of our fundraising so far has been for our general fund and litigation. We will either coordinate with GBREB through their campaign or fork our efforts to make independent expenditures as on previous ballot initiatives, to be determined.

I’m proud to have been reelected to our non-voting seat on the Mass Save Equity Working Group, discussed elsewhere in this edition.

Website-wise, we have been making a number of back-end improvements aimed at increasing site reliability. We also continue to invest in our Spanish language content. All rental forms for tenancy lifecycle step one screening and step two applications are now published. We are not yet taking memberships while we wait for additional developer resources to become available. We found in testing a few places still needing translation.

We could wish for 2026 to be a year of soaring progress in solving our housing crisis. Unfortunately, we will almost certainly have to spend the majority of our effort and most of our free time fending off leftwing populism in the form of the 2026 rent control ballot question. The rightwing populism choking off federal funding, international trade and labor will make it a particularly challenging year economically, as well. We can get through it by being true to what is real and decent.

Please join as a member, encourage others to join, become a property rights supporter or increase your level of support.

Sincerely,

Doug

Executive Director

MassLandlords, Inc.