Rent control ballot fight heating up as Mass. Teachers and other unions line up in support
In their high-stakes push to put rent control on the Massachusetts ballot next year, housing advocates know they face an uphill battle, with the state’s real estate industry ready to spend millions to defeat the measure.
But now rent control backers have some powerful allies too: Several of the state’s most politically powerful labor unions.
A group of major unions that collectively represent more than 270,000 workers last week threw their support behind the ballot measure, which, if passed, would limit annual rent increases to 5 percent in most apartment buildings across Massachusetts. The unions — which include the SEIU Massachusetts State Council, UFCW Local 1445, UAW Region 9A, and both the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Boston Teachers Union — said they would support the initiative because the cost of rent is perhaps the greatest financial burden their members face.
“We represent a lot of workers who make $20 or $21 an hour, and everyone feels the same crunch if they rent right now,“ said David Foley, president of SEIU Local 509. “Whatever wages the union is able to win at the bargaining table, those raises are almost always eaten up by huge rent increases.”
The endorsements by large unions that played major roles in prior ballot campaigns represent critical support for a campaign that is run largely by a collection of tenants’ rights groups. Massachusetts voters outlawed rent control in 1994 — then in effect only in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge — and the real estate industry has vowed to fight efforts to reinstate it.
It’s also a shift from two years ago, when progressive tenant advocates briefly attempted to put a rent control measure on the ballot, but supporters were divided. Representative Mike Connolly introduced the initiative, but Homes For All declined to support it, citing timing and a hope that the Legislature would act on its own.
Crucially, unions also did not endorse the question, and Connolly withdrew the initiative.
This time around, several unions say they will support signature-gathering efforts to get the initiative to the ballot. The campaign must submit nearly 75,000 signatures by Nov. 19 to progress to the next stage.
For their part, real estate groups are beginning to rally against the initiative. The Greater Boston Real Estate Board, NAIOP Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Association of Realtors sent a letter to mayors across the state earlier this month warning of the “unintended consequences of this ill-conceived rent control proposal.” They warned that the measure would stifle production of new homes, hurt landlords’ bottom line, and ultimately lead to a decline in the upkeep of apartment buildings across the state — all while doing little to rein in housing costs.
“The proposed rent control ballot question will not solve this problem,” the groups wrote. “In fact, based on data from across the country and within Massachusetts, this proposal will make the problem worse, hurting tenants, property owners, our economy, and communities.”
It’s not just the real estate industry that is skeptical. The initiative would tie annual rent increases to the Consumer Price Index, with a maximum of 5 percent, except for buildings of four units or fewer and new construction for a decade — carve-outs designed to protect small landlords and keep the production of new apartments steady.
While support for rent control — particularly for “rent stabilization” policies that tie rent to inflation — has grown nationally, a 5 percent cap would be lower than nearly any other policy on the books right now in the United States, including in Oregon and Washington, and in Portland, Maine.
It also applies everywhere in Massachusetts, while Connolly’s 2023 ballot measure would have simply lifted the statewide ban on rent control, allowing municipalities to decide if they wanted to enact a plan of their own.
The initiative has given at least temporary pause to some of rent control’s biggest supporters in the state, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who campaigned on rent stabilization and proposed a version of the policy in 2023 that died in the state Legislature.
When asked about the ballot initiative on GBH in August, Wu said it “would not be what I would have supported for the City of Boston.”
“I’m going to have to figure out what to do about this, because this may be the only shot for a while,” she said. (Wu’s office did not immediately respond to questions on the union endorsements Tuesday morning.)
But several key unions say this is a shot worth taking.
Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said his union is fully behind Homes For All’s initiative. Their reasoning is twofold: Many teachers the union represents cannot afford to rent in the communities in which they work, and countless students are struggling with homelessness, or bounce from school to school because their family is struggling with rent.
“We have to care about how students’ families are doing outside of school walls if we want their kids to succeed in the classroom,” said Page. “And while of course building more housing is an important part of the solution, we have students and educators who need help dealing with this problem right now.”
SEIU’s state council had previously supported efforts to allow municipalities to pass rent control if they choose, and while they saw Homes For All’s initiative as ”ambitious,” Foley said it has the union’s unanimous support, and that they will support signature-gathering efforts. If the question makes it to the ballot, he said, the union will have another discussion about how else to support it.
The initiative, both union presidents said, could be an interesting test case. Despite powerful opposition, rent control, long a lightning rod issue in Massachusetts, has polled favorably in recent years, they said, because people are struggling, and may be willing to support a more controversial solution.
“Times are tough and people are looking for relief,” said Foley. “This could grow momentum organically without money behind it. We want to help foster that.”