What would
RENT CONTROL
mean for YOU?

Taxes, taxes – and more taxes
Rent control will hold rents down and stop capital improvements, devaluing HALF the city’s housing. So taxes WILL GO UP and UP for non-controlled single-family homeowners, condo owners, and two- and three-family occupying owners, whose tax burden is already heavy.

How much will be rent-controlled?
Close to half of all of Boston’s housing units will be rent-controlled, pushing their lost tax revenue onto the other non-controlled units.

12,407 vacant units

58,621 owner-occupied non-condo units (single-family, owner’s unit in 2- & 3-family)

18,588 owner-occupied condos

19,770 renter-occupied condos = 10% of all housing units RENT-CONTROLLED

92,681 market rental units = 46% of all housing units RENT-CONTROLLED (except for units in owner-occupied smaller structures)

202,067 TOTAL UNITS excluding public or assisted housing

History proves it
Boston’s tax base was smallest in 1994, the last year of the old rent control – with the highest residential tax rate to compensate for it.
 

Bankrupt condo associations
HALF of all condos are rented. They will be rent-controlled and eviction-controlled. This proposal says nothing and will do nothing about raising rents for capital improvements. Owner-occupied condos will carry the burden of renter-occupied condos. If they can’t or won’t, bankruptcy!

Helping the rich, not the poor
When the old rent control system ended in 1995, the Boston Rent Equity Board reported then that only 8% of Boston’s rent-controlled tenants were low- or moderate-income who qualified for two extra years of rent control. Why should we all pay for a system that does not work?

Crushing minorities, immigrants
Just as minorities and immigrants are now moving up and owning multi-family properties in improving neighborhoods, they will be crushed. Neighborhoods will deteriorate as small property owners are driven out. Small owners can’t manage the bureaucracy and can’t afford to fight tenants with free lawyers. Once rent control gets in, it will expand. That’s why small property owners spearheaded the fight to end rent control in 1994 and are fighting it so hard now.

Liberal economist Paul Krugman:
“The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and – among economists, anyway – one of the least controversial. In 1992 a poll of the American Economic Association found 93 percent of its members agreeing that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.” Almost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand. Desperate renters have nowhere to go... The absence of new apartment construction... Bitter relations between tenants and landlords... All predictable. The pathologies of a rent-controlled housing market are right out of the textbook.” (From Krugman’s New York Times column, June 7, 2000)

Please Act Now!

1. Attend the City Council Hearing on Tuesday, November 23, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Boston City Hall, Fifth Floor.

2. Write, call or email the Boston City Councilors and Mayor Menino before the critical final Council vote on Wednesday December 8, at 11:30 a.m: Click here.  for contact info on all Boston City Councilors and Mayor Menino.

3. Join SPOA’s email list: Click here. 

4. Join SPOA if you are not already a member. Click here. 

Thank you for your support!  

Lenore Monello Schloming, SPOA president