Wu’s rent control plan takes hits from both sides
Boston mayor tries to strike a balance on plan to rein in housing costs
By 
WITH YESTERDAY’S FILING of a home-rule petition with the City Council to impose rent restrictions in Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu followed through on a cornerstone promise of her 2021 campaign.
Now comes the hard part.
In her letter to city councilors accompanying the proposal, Wu said the plan would allow the city to “better protect families from displacement caused by exorbitant rent increases,” while also serving to “maintain a robust development market, on which our new housing production depends.”
It’s the kind of balanced language that the mayor hopes will help smooth the way for the controversial plan to make it through the layers of approvals needed to become law. But the proposal quickly drew heat from both sides of the debate, evoking shades of the old Texas quip that the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.
City Councilor Kendra Lara, who is part of a cohort of progressive councilors favoring a much more muscular set of controls, called out the mayor’s attempt to straddle the divide on the issue.
“I think that is what happens when you play the fence,” said Lara, who called the allowable annual rent increases in the plan “untenable” and said she’ll move to amend it when it comes to the council. “You can’t be reasonable and in the middle with a housing crisis that is displacing thousands of people,” said Lara, who chairs the council’s housing committee.
While the proposal strikes strong tenant advocates like Lara as weak tea, it has the real estate industry sounding alarms that the city is flirting with disaster.
“Rent control, also known as rent stabilization, is a proven failure. It increases housing costs, discourages upkeep and maintenance, and disincentivizes construction,” said Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, in reaction to yesterday’s filing. “We strongly oppose Mayor Wu’s plan to bring government price controls on housing to Boston because it would make the region’s housing crisis even worse. Instead, the city – and all of Massachusetts – should focus on passing pro-housing policies that reduce red tape, encourage construction, and lower overall costs.”
Rent control was banned statewide by a 1994 ballot question. For Boston to reintroduce limits on rents, the home-rule petition must win approval of the city council and then the Legislature.
City councilors seem determined to have their say, with some eager to put stronger limits on rent increases.
City Councilor Erin Murphy, herself a renter, said she was still weighing the plan. Murphy has been on record opposing the reimposition of rent control, but “that’s not what I would call it,” she said of Wu’s proposal, which she termed a “watered down” version of rent control, a characterization that actually made her more favorably disposed to the plan.
Everyone seems to agree that housing costs and availability are a pressing problem in Boston. But the emerging debate on Wu’s proposal shows the agreement may end there.
