Dot tenants push ballot measure to cap rent boosts at five percent

Published in the Dorchester Reporter

Volunteers from Dorchester are gathering signatures at grocery stores, MBTA stops, and community centers in an effort to get a rent-control measure on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot that, if approved, would limit rent increases for most residential units to five percent a year, or the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower.

The bill would exempt owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units and properties less than 10 years old. It would also repeal the 1994 law that outlawed rent control statewide, ended programs in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, and barred new ones.

Organizers have until Nov. 19 to collect the 74,574 signatures needed to put the petition on next year’s ballot.

Supporters say the proposal, if made law, would give urgently needed relief to tenants struggling to afford housing, with many spending more than 30 percent of their income for rent. In Boston and Dorchester especially, advocates say, it’s essential to preserve working-class and immigrant communities that are now facing mounting displacement.

For their part, opponents counter that rent caps would discourage new construction, reduce maintenance, and burden small property owners, worsening the shortage the measure aims to fix.

Said Lori Hurlebaus of Fields Corner, a member of the resident-run alliance Dorchester Not for Sale, “We’ve been talking to people all over Dorchester who are feeling the pressure of rising rents. A lot of folks are worried about whether they can keep living in the neighborhoods they grew up in. This ballot campaign is about making sure they can stay.”

Dorchester Not for Sale hosted a community dinner on Oct. 9 at the Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (VietAID) center in Fields Corner, where tenants and small property owners shared Vietnamese food and discussed strategy.

Lan Le, a Vietnamese refugee who spent two decades in Dorchester before being priced out, said she has moved more than 15 times since arriving in the United States in 1981.

“It made my family have to move out of Dorchester, which is where all the Asian community gather,” she said. “My mother doesn’t speak English, so it’s the best place for her to be in Dorchester, but because of the rent that we cannot afford, we had to move to Quincy.”

Nelito Vaz, a tenant who has lived on Robinson Street for a decade, said his monthly rent has climbed from $1,600 to $2,150 over that time. “It’s very stressful,” he said. “When I pay the rent, I barely have money to afford other things that I need.”

Despite already spending about half his income on rent, Vaz said he’s determined to stay among his Cape Verdean community in Dorchester. “That’s why I’m part of this organization,” he said, “so we can stay here and not get relocated.”

Not everyone at the dinner was a renter. Rich LeBrun, a Dorchester resident who owns and lives in a two-family home in Ashmont Hill, supports rent control to protect both his tenants and his neighborhood.

“In the last 20 years we’ve seen people that have been there for years and years be priced out,” he said. “As a small landlord, I see this as protecting my investment, because it’s protecting my neighborhood.”

But many landlords and property groups say rent control would do more harm than good, warning it could drive up costs, discourage upkeep, and shrink the city’s housing supply.

Leaders of the Small Property Owners Association, which helped repeal Massachusetts’s previous rent control law in 1994, argue that bringing it back would repeat what they call a failed experiment. The policy, in place from 1970 to 1994, “was a nightmare on all fronts,” said Vice President Amir Shahsavari, who noted that the association was founded by small, “mom-and-pop” landlords frustrated by what they saw as abuses under the old system. “History has shown that the policy itself is unworkable.”

Tony Lopes, a Dorchester property manager who oversees approximately 30 units, said the effects would be especially damaging in neighborhoods like his.

Of that earlier time, he said, “It led to higher rents, fewer available units, and discouraged new housing development. He added that rising insurance and tax costs make rent caps “unsustainable for local owners who rely on rents to send their kids to school or fund retirement.”

Other landlords were blunter. Rick Martin, a Clam Point investor who has owned multiple two- and three-family homes in Dorchester since the 1990s, called rent control “an utter disaster for Boston” and said it would drive small owners out of the city.

“If they’re going to bring back rent control, I want nothing of it,” he said. “You’re going to see people flock out of the rental industry left and right, and then you’re going to end up with dilapidated houses everywhere.”

Tenant organizers dismissed those claims as fear-mongering from an industry long resistant to oversight.

“This isn’t about punishing landlords,” said Jason Boyd, housing coordinator for the Dorchester-based coalition Action for Equity. He noted that the proposal exempts small, owner-occupied buildings and gives new developments a 10-year grace period. “It’s not targeting community members who live in the community,” he said. “It’s a simple and effective tool to protect tenants and allow people to plan.”

Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts, a statewide coalition of tenant and housing justice groups leading the Keep MA Home ballot campaign, said opponents are recycling outdated arguments.

“We’ve heard the same scare tactics before, but this is 21st-century rent control,” she said. “Our communities can’t wait while people are being priced out of neighborhoods they built.”

This story comes from a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.