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Rent-control backers fail to collect enough signatures for 2024 ballot; didn't help that an expected ally decided to fight the idea
By adamg on Mon, 11/13/2023 - 10:08am
State Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) announced Friday that he and other supporters of a 2024 rent-control ballot question had only collected 10,175 signatures, far short of the roughly 75,000 they would have needed.
Connolly said he and other backers will instead concentrate on a proposed tenant protection act now in the legislature.
The Homes for All Coalition, which includes City Life/La Vida Urbana, fought the proposal, saying it made more sense to organize for a ballot question in 2026.
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Comments
Great News
The last thing we need is another bad policy. Especially one that hurts the people it's intended to help.
Bad News.
Your comment is patronizing and ignorant.
Far from it
Every economist in the world agrees with my comment.
not "every"
here is a letter penned by 30 respected american economists backing rent stabilization.
i'm sure you'll say "okay but that's only 30 economists", but my point is that an argument against rent stabilization should not be the default.
Lots of economists had opinions on covid transmission, too
Go jump off a cliff with them if you'd like.
You off yer meds again?
They gave opinions on the impact on the economy & recovery from Covid not about the transmission silly. As usual, you resort to insults over facts.
I mean
Many economists were suggesting that lockdowns, to name just one covid mitigation measure, were unnecessary and even harmful because of the potential economic impact, as you say. That sounds like economists having an opinion on covid transmission to me.
WHAT?
But Connolly said that 70% of Massachusetts Residents supported rent control.
There are over 4.7 million registered voters in the state.
He could only get under 11,000 signatures.
I wonder what happened?
I guess what you hear from Socialists Kicked Out of Socialist Organizations State Reps, the IDF, and Fox News is all BS.
rent needs to stabilize
but Property owners are not charities. It is very tough to do this without artificial lowering values or actually increasing prices. In a weird way, Section 8, creates a price "floor". that guarantees a certain price.
john, I am actually interested in your opinion of this idea I have. A rent-to-own coop. The apartments are micro studios or even Single Room Occupancy. The person pays market rate. Just like a condo, a percentage of the money goes to maintenance, insurance, water etc. Part of the money goes into equity. A resident would have to vest (say after a year) and they can only use the equity for a down payment. The idea is that a person that works and pays their bills can actually save to own a home. If you could start with a nonprofit entity that owns the property outright, you could avoid getting killed by interest. It's not a handout. You would only get what you pay in.
That's been done
There's a program in a few cities where a non-profit builds tiny houses and rents them at low price for a few years to someone who wouldn't otherwise be able to rent or buy a traditional market unit. After a few years they either own the unit or they've moved out. There are restrictions placed on the renters/owners (needs to be their only residence, can't sublet, etc) but it's not onerous.
These programs have been successful but depend on there being affordable land and towns willing to be flexible on zoning. The price of land would be the biggest limitation within greater Boston.
The problem with doing this for multi-unit buildings is that they are so extremely expensive to build in greater Boston. (And that's ignoring land cost.) So even if the developer was a non-profit not looking to make money, they are hard pressed to rent-to-sell it to people for what would be considered an "affordable" rate.
not what I meant.
So Cambridge has restricted deed housing that a qualified person can buy, and they can only sell it back to Cambridge at 5% annual increase in equity. This is close.
What I mean is that people that would not qualify subsidized rent just can't save up to own any kind of property of their own. This would be a cooperative, so each person owns a share of the property. They can save equity and pay for proper upkeep.
Our society profits off of
Our society profits off of keeping people poor and this is just one way it does. If we wanted to solve poverty, homelessness etc, we could but as a society, we choose not too.
CA dumped 17.5 billion on homeless in the last four years
And the homeless population got larger. How can money solve homelessness again? Even if it could, at what cost? 100 billion? 500 billion? More?