Boston City Council shows mixed support for rent control ballot question

Local News

While advocates push for a 2026 ballot question on rent control, a City Council measure supporting that effort was objected to this week.

Next fall, Massachusetts voters could be presented with the option to enact rent control across the state. However, even placing that question before voters requires a long process and there are multiple hurdles yet to clear. This week, Boston City Council members briefly debated a resolution expressing support for that ballot measure. But further discussion and a vote were blocked when one councilor objected. 

Although many members of the City Council support rent control in some form, Wednesday’s meeting indicated that divisions surrounding the topic continue to linger among elected officials. 

Councilor Henry Santana filed the resolution ahead of the meeting. 

“Putting rent control back on the ballot would let current Bostonians, many of which are at risk of displacement and housing insecurity, show their support or opposition for a measure that would directly impact their lives,” he said. 

Housing advocates are pushing the ballot measure, which would tie annual rent increases across the state to cost of living increases, with a hard annual cap of 5%. There would be some exemptions, including for owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units and newly constructed buildings during their first 10 years of existence. 

The process behind that proposed ballot measure was recently allowed to proceed by Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Advocates now need to collect around 75,000 signatures in support of the petition, a process that can be time consuming and costly. They are launching that signature-collection effort this weekend with a series of events in Springfield, Worcester, Lynn, and Boston. 

In 1994, Massachusetts voters chose to effectively ban rent control statewide. Rent control supporters in Boston often cite the fact the majority of Boston voters at the time opposed the ban. 

Mayor Michelle Wu has been one of those supporters. In 2023, she introduced a plan to exempt Boston from the statewide ban and cap annual rent hikes, successfully garnering enough support to pass it through the City Council. That effort stalled in the State House. 

State Rep. Mike Connolly also tried to secure a ballot initiative that would have repealed the rent control ban to let individual communities dictate their own policies. He hoped to put the measure in front of voters last fall, but Connolly and his allies ultimately could not garner enough support.

Opponents of rent control include many in the state’s influential real estate industry. They say that the practice leads to stalled housing construction and ultimately higher costs for renters. 

Speaking during Wednesday’s meeting, Councilor John FitzGerald echoed some of those worries. FitzGerald recently spoke with the City Council president of St. Paul, Minnesota, he said, about that city’s recent rent control experiment. Housing construction dropped precipitously there after a rent control ordinance was implemented in 2022. 

“I know that’s just one city, but again, when you’re having that conversation with the City Council president of that city and they’re telling you this is what we’re feeling and this is what we’re seeing, that gives me pause,” he said. 

FitzGerald said that he needed to do more research and would not support Santana’s resolution nor object to it. A few minutes later Councilor Ed Flynn did object, saying that a public hearing is needed to inform councilors further on the details of the potential ballot measure. Flynn’s move shut down discussion and caused the resolution to be referred to a committee for a future hearing. 

Before the discussion ended, multiple councilors spoke about their desire to see rent control resurrected in Boston and across Massachusetts. Councilor Enrique Pepén referenced the state’s new ban on renter-paid broker’s fees, which was implemented earlier this summer. 

“This is the next step forward because it’s an aggressive approach, it’s one that is truly advocating for the renters, and one that I believe we should be supporting not just here in the city of Boston but across the state of Massachusetts,” he said.