Letter from the Executive Director for May 2025: Rule of Law Slipping

Recently there have been many changes impacting housing providers, from Boston through Massachusetts up to the United States federal government. Our mission of creating better rental housing becomes much more important in this unpredictable environment. We’re going to keep doing our work. But rather than focus on what MassLandlords has done the last month, or on specific policy changes, this month’s letter must be given to the eroding rule of law.

Both major candidates for mayor of the City of Boston, Josh Kraft and Michelle Wu, are calling for rent control, which was banned statewide under General Law Chapter 40P. Why should they do this, when rent control was tried and failed for renters, landlords and everyone else? In part because of unlawful, unreported lobbying by moneyed developer interests. We are in litigation with the city over public records that would prove this. The city has attempted to snowball us with approximately 8,500 pages of garbage response. We have de-duplicated this down to 30 pages that are unique and partially responsive. A judge recently blocked our right to subpoena members of the RSAC for this evidence directly. We’re not supposed to know what’s going on.

At the state level, you will recall, we sued for access to public records on rental assistance discrimination. After years and a hundred pages of briefs and affidavits, our case was dismissed for “failure to state a claim.” The people who mishandled $800 million of pandemic rental assistance won. We were not supposed to know what went on.

Federally, we briefly faced emergency tariffs on everything construction-related, plus wartime deportation of student and other renters who make up a significant part of member business revenue, with neither an emergency nor a war. The tariffs weren’t even supposed to be that big. You can be excused for thinking our businesses are better represented by this administration, but there is a qualitative difference in the representation you and I will get as small business owners compared to the deep pockets who get exemptions and favoritism whoever is in charge. What happens next? We’re not supposed to know.

The hallmark of a good government at any level is transparency and predictability. As long-term investors and owner-operators, predictability is particularly important for us. We cannot easily relocate our businesses. We might have invested with a time horizon of decades. If the law says a thing, that is what we should expect to be enforced. If the law is not to our liking, we cannot simply ignore it or concoct elaborate legal theories to accomplish our aim. And our elected representatives should not ram through controversial laws to appease their base until overturned the next cycle. The left have been very wrong in this regard, and the right have been worse in the other direction. Whatever your ideology, you should be wary. This system may be going unstable locally, statewide and nationally. As a rental housing operator, you have a right to demand some transparency and predictability month after month.

The solutions are not known to me. But I can refocus us on something that matters and is within our control: the built environment. The longest-standing human systems on the planet are cities. They cut across centuries, nations and ideologies. Urbanization is one of the major trends of our lifetime. So keep creating better rental housing. And if you have a chance to advocate for predictability in law at any level, please do. We have a lot of work to do.

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.