Small landlords push back against rent control ballot proposal

Advocates for small rental property owners describe the rent control proposal likely headed for next fall’s ballot as the most “restrictive and aggressive” the state has seen to date and say it would be detrimental to small landlords.

Small property owners operate on tight margins, so many are typically only a few missed bank checks away from bankruptcy or losing their business, said Amir Shahsavari, president of the Small Property Owners Association.

He said if these “mom and pop” businesses no longer exist, tenants will be in a “tough predicament” if properties are taken over by larger corporations because they will no longer have a person to connect with immediately if there are issues in their building, a benefit usually provided by smaller landlords.

In addition, operating costs, like utilities, insurance and property taxes have risen in recent years, which factors into rent pricing. However, if caps are put in place, advocates are concerned property owners will not be able to adapt to these rising costs.

(New Bedford’s residential tax rate has been dropping from year to year, but the average tax bill has gone up because property values have increased.)

“On one hand, we appreciate the pressures that renters have when they say that rent is increasing,” Shahsavari said. “But what people miss in this story is that operating costs are also going up exorbitantly for the property owner, too.”

“If [small property owners] can’t increase rent rates, what’s going to happen is they have to exit the market,” said Tony Lopes, a SPOA vice president. “We can’t afford to supply this housing at a loss every month.”

The initiative seeks to limit annual rent increases for most residential units in Massachusetts by either the Consumer Price Index increase or 5% — whichever value is lower — during a 12-month period. It would set base rents as of Jan. 31, 2026, but state residents would not vote on the measure, which would apply to every municipality, until next November.

To reach the ballot, it must still go through a process that includes certification of more than 124,000 signatures, legislative review and likely another round of signature gathering if lawmakers do not approve the proposal.

Effect on small property owners

The rent control proposal would exempt owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units from the measure. Noemi Ramos, executive director of the New England Community Project, said because of this, the notion that the measure will impact small landlords is “out the window.”

But Shahsavari of SPOA said this provision is “misleading” because property owners with four or fewer units are a minority among small property owners. Because of the tight limit, those who exceed this number — which he said is the “vast majority” of small property owners — would be categorized with companies that operate on a much larger and commercialized scale.

The SPOA says small property owners provide 65% of the rental housing in Massachusetts. Shahsavari said he doesn’t define a small property owner based on the number of apartment units an owner manages, but on the business’s structure, size, scope and reach.

“What one small owner can handle might be different from the capacity that another owner would have,” he said. “But it does ultimately come down to the degree to which the owner can manage his or her business in a hands-on way without expanding too far out to the point where they really become a conglomerate.”

Ramos said Homes For All Massachusetts, the statewide coalition behind the ballot initiative, decided to use four units as the cut-off in the provision after speaking with small property owners and deciding “what are our values when we think about how we define small landlords.”

“I remember asking one of the developers in the [city of Boston’s Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee], ‘how do you define a small landlord?’ and they said ‘50 units or less,’” Ramos said. “When you think about 50 units, that’s a business. That’s no longer a small landlord.”

Another provision in the initiative addresses development — another industry opposed to the bill — by exempting new apartment units for 10 years. (The provision would apply to apartment buildings that open after the measure’s approval and also those that have been built within the last 10 years.)

Tamara Small, CEO of the NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association of Massachusetts, said the “threat of the [rent control] question” is already having a chilling effect on investment and development. If implemented, she said the measure would also lead to decreased quality of housing and repairs, which would result in either sub-par conditions or units being taken off the market.

Antonio Ennis, a community organizer for Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood at City Life / Vida Urbana, disagreed with quality concerns and said landlords should always factor in money for property repairs and keeping buildings up to code. Ennis, a small property owner who occupies one unit and rents out two other units in a triple decker in Dorchester, would not be affected by the ballot measure.

Developers and property owner advocates said the primary solution to solving the state’s housing crisis is increased development, which they said a rent control measure would hinder.

“If rent control is in place in the market, investors do not go to that market. They go elsewhere,” Small said. “Without those investment dollars, projects are not built.”

Small pointed toward cities like Austin and Phoenix as models for Boston to solve its housing crisis. In both cities, an increased housing supply resulted in lower rent growth and prices.

“No financial decisions and investments are made on a 10-year time horizon,” said Conor Yunits, committee chair for an opposition group for the measure called “Housing for Massachusetts.”

The National Low Income Housing Coalition stated that Massachusetts needs to create 183,000 homes for low-income households statewide, according to its 2025 Massachusetts Housing Profile. 

Mark Martinez, staff housing attorney for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, pointed out that despite not having rent control for over 30 years, Massachusetts is still behind in terms of housing production.

“This isn’t a development policy. This is a stabilization policy,” he said. “Judging a stabilization policy based off of whether or not it’s going to spur development doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

He said the measure is a “common sense” policy, but not the only measure that needs to be taken to solve the housing crisis.

“It’s going to take a decade, if not longer, to build all the housing that we need,” Martinez said. “But in the meantime, families need to be able to stay around.”

New Bedford’s City Council voted in 2023 to introduce a non-binding ballot question that would’ve asked voters if they supported “an ordinance stabilizing rent,” but Mayor Jon Mitchell vetoed it. Councilor Shane Burgo, who spearheaded the measure, said this fall that he still supports the idea.

Rents in Massachusetts

Massachusetts historically has some of the nation’s highest rent prices, and recent reports have ranked it as the state with the second highest cost of living. In May, the Journal of Consumer Research ranked Massachusetts as the fifth worst state for renters due to a lack of affordability and availability.

“This is a statewide issue, and we’re continuing to see the crisis intensify across the state,” said Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes For All Massachusetts. “We can’t wait while corporate landlords come into our cities and towns and hike up the rent and displace our communities.”

More than 50% of New Bedford residents who rent are “cost-burdened,” as of 2024, meaning they pay above 30% of their income on housing, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Residents paying more than 50% of their income on housing are classified as “severely cost burdened,” according to the Healey administration’s “A Home for Everyone” initiative. About 25% of renters in New Bedford fall into this category.

When families have to spend an excess amount of their income on housing, they have less money for needs such as food, transportation and child care. They are also unable to “save money for opportunities that could provide a pathway to higher income as well as wealth-building,” which includes education, job training or homeownership, according to the initiative.

“Rent often is the first place people put their money towards,” said Chelsea Sedani, director of advocacy at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. “If you don’t have that, it makes a lot of other things very challenging.”

Decreased rents could have an effect on the larger economy as well because they could potentially increase purchasing power.

“If we alleviate the pressure that people are feeling around housing costs, we’re going to make it easier for them to spend in other areas of their lives,” Sedani said.

The current proposal would require rent control for all of the state’s 351 municipalities, including New Bedford. 

Massachusetts voters banned rent control in 1994 through a ballot proposal launched by SPOA. Many opponents cite this vote as another reason the new proposal should not be implemented.

Sen. Patricia Jehlen, D-Somerville, pointed out that Boston, Brookline and Cambridge — the only communities in Massachusetts with rent control in 1994 — voted against outlawing it then. She said Massachusetts needs to not just create more housing but to preserve “naturally occurring affordable housing.”

“People are not going to stay in Massachusetts if we just count on building new housing,” she said. “It’s not fast enough and not cheap enough.”

High rent prices make it difficult for residents to plan and save money long term, so rent increase caps would provide predictability that would keep people in their homes for longer, Martinez said.

Martinez grew up in rural western Massachusetts, which he said used to be the “affordable part of the state. Now, “there’s not an affordable part of Massachusetts anymore,” he said.

Although both supporters and opponents presented different ways on how to approach the housing affordability crisis, they agreed on one solution: increasing the supply of housing.

“Supply, supply, supply,” Yunits said. “That’s really all there is. We’ve got to build.”

Crystal Yormick is a Boston University journalism student and a frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light. Email her at cyormick@newbedfordlight.org.