IN THE THREE DECADES since voters narrowly banned rent control in Massachusetts, every swing to revive even the mildest version of the policy has connected with nothing but air. 

Requests from Boston, Brookline, and Somerville withered on Beacon Hill, statewide bills stalled out, and ballot measures fell apart at early junctures. Progressive elected officials and advocates have settled into a frustrated rhythm: Come before indifferent lawmakers every session and ask, unsuccessfully, to leave rent control decisions in the hands of cities and towns that want it.   

Today, the movement to limit rent increases has new momentum, with an updated ballot question coursing toward voters in 2026. It might seem like a boon to the left, but to some who have spent years slowly building support for rent control, the campaign also poses an ultimatum. 

That’s because the initiative petition does not seek simply to lift the ban, nor to allow rent control in the handful of communities that have requested it. The proposal instead would apply one of the nation’s strictest rent caps to all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, from Williamstown to West Tisbury and everywhere in between. 

It’s a dramatic, swing-for-the-fences approach that the campaign, led by advocacy group Homes for All, sees as simpler messaging. 

“We’ll continue to support the local option bill at the State House, and we know that is often the way the state Legislature likes to do policy,” said Homes for All executive director Carolyn Chou. “We’ll continue to push that, but we feel that if we go in front of the voters, we need to be presenting something that will impact their lives immediately.”  

The strategy has put many longtime supporters of capping rents in an awkward position, at a time when housing prices are soaring across Massachusetts and the state vacancy rate is one of the lowest in the nation. Should they spend whatever political capital they’ve built over the past decade on a measure far more dramatic than has previously been suggested? Or should they stay on the sidelines, with the risk of alienating allies or undermining momentum? 

With advocates buoyed by last year’s votes to boot the 10th grade MCAS test as a graduation requirement, allow ride-share drivers to unionize, and open up the Legislature’s books, few progressive politicians are eager to downplay the rent control measure’s chances or be associated with real estate interests over the average renter.   

That would be, they say quietly, political suicide.  

But not everyone is eagerly jumping on board yet.  

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, perhaps the state’s most high-profile supporter of rent control, so far has not thrown her support behind the question, though some of her Boston allies are more enthusiastic. The incoming mayor of Somerville, which green-lit the most ambitious local rent stabilization proposal since the ban, wonders why the statewide pitch needed to be more complicated than simply allowing rent control back into the housing toolkit. 

Several other elected officials and organizers said they would vote for the measure while openly questioning the strategy of going so big in a state where municipalities guard what little local control they have. In private, some worry that the Homes for All group leading the campaign is headed down a path that could set the movement back decades. 

“This is more aggressive than any proposal that has ever been discussed in anyone’s memory in Massachusetts and perhaps anywhere,” said Rep. Mike Connolly of Cambridge, who still intends to support the measure. “They’re making a huge bet that has a lot of consequences.”  

That line of thinking, in turn, has ruffled feathers among supporters, who think it’s essential for anyone with an interest in rent control to maintain a consistent message given the inevitable blitz of opposition from the real estate industry.  

Rep. Sam Montaño of Boston, a longtime rent control supporter who backs the ballot question, described comments by Connolly and others as “frustrating.”  

“What’s the point of saying you have an issue with it if we are moving forward?” Montaño said. “The real estate industry is going to outspend us by a margin of, like, 20 to one. Why are you giving them any more power to say there’s division within the coalition?”  

Proponents say the ballot question is bold, but simple. 

It would cap most rent increases across the state at either the annual change in the Consumer Price Index or 5 percent, whichever is lower.  

Owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units would be exempt, as would newly constructed units for the first 10 years of hosting residents, most public housing, housing in educational or religious institutions, or units typically rented to visitors for fewer than 14 days. 

Most other rent-control proposals floated in Massachusetts or enacted elsewhere in the United States give landlords more flexibility. 

Boston, Brookline, and Somerville — the three communities that submitted home-rule petitions over the past few sessions to the Legislature seeking rent control — each sought to limit rent increases at the CPI change plus an additional margin, effectively allowing landlords to go a bit beyond inflation.  

Statewide laws in Oregon and Washington limit rent increases to inflation plus 7 percent, or 10 percent, whichever is lower. California similarly sets its state cap at inflation plus 5 percent, or no more than 10 percent in the highest-inflation years, while allowing some communities to craft their own policies. 

The city of St. Paul, Minnesota limited rent increases at 3 percent annually with a few options for landlords to seek exceptions. Voters approved that measure in 2021, and the city soon experienced a dramatic downturn in housing production — the seventh largest production plummet in the entire Midwest according to federal data — though other Minnesota municipalities without rent control also experienced pandemic-era downturns. 

St. Paul’s city council in May voted to exempt units built after 2004 from rent control, amending the voter-approved law. 

COMPARE: Details of rent control laws and proposals

The new Massachusetts ballot measure’s tight limit on rent growth mirrors legislation filed in several consecutive lawmaking terms Rep. David Rogers of Cambridge, Montaño of Boston, and Sen. Patricia Jehlen of Somerville, the House version of which is due for a hearing before the Legislature’s Housing Committee on Wednesday.  

In an interview, Montaño said the bill is “as close to the middle as you can get” at balancing what tenants can afford with increases high enough to empower landlords “continuing to invest” in properties.  

However, that bill offers rent control as an opt-in tool that any city or town could deploy after securing approval at the local level – not an automatic statewide mandate, as the ballot question seeks – and it would also allow communities to restrict no-cause evictions. 

Both Wu and Somerville Mayor-elect Jake Wilson have leaned toward a nuanced local approach rather than deploying a one-size-fits-all requirement. 

As the Somerville City Council crafted its 2023 home-rule petition with a working group’s recommendations, Wilson said, they mulled Somerville’s particular rent prices and housing pressures. 

“I would say the rule of thumb should be something that is ultimately fair to a landlord and fair to a tenant, where it would not break the bank either on a one-year basis or over a sequence of years for a tenant looking to stay in their home,” he said in an interview, “and it would allow a landlord to make the kind of improvements and investments in that property to maintain it as a good housing unit.” 

The ballot proposal, which Wilson now says he will enthusiastically get behind and work to pass, is a far cry from a one-off tailored local measure or even a blanket permission for cities and towns to pursue their own types of rent control without needing legislative sign-off. 

“I will say that the approach that seemed the most logical to me was just a straight up repeal of the prohibition on rent control,” said Wilson, a current at-large city councilor. “The folks behind this say they have polling that shows good support for this prescriptive law-of-the-land model. I’m trusting them on that, and I’m hopeful that this ballot measure ultimately succeeds, so that we can bring in the rent stabilization needed to stanch the bleeding that our communities are experiencing from displacement.” 

Wu has kept the measure at arm’s length. 

When asked in August about the proposal, she told GBH that it “would not be what I would have supported for the City of Boston.” She said at the time that she would “have to figure out what to do about this, because this may be the only shot for a while,” she said. 

Almost three months later, Wu’s stance remains unenthusiastic.  

“The mayor has not yet taken a position on the ballot question,” a city spokesperson said on Friday in response to a CommonWealth Beacon inquiry. 

“She believes that although communities across the Commonwealth are all facing intense housing pressures and the steep cost of housing is Massachusetts’ biggest competitive liability, each city’s specific needs and conditions require nuanced and specific solutions,” the spokesperson said.  

Boston’s proposal would allow rent hikes of inflation plus 6 percent, up to a 10 percent year-over-year cap — higher in every scenario than what the ballot question would require. The city’s measure would also, unlike the ballot question, allow the rent to be raised to market prices in between tenants, prompting Boston officials to argue that additional tenant protections would be needed to make sure landlords could not force out a renter to raise rents. 

Wu took some heat from both the left and the right over her more modest rent stabilization pitch. Rent control advocates said it was an anti-gouging measure at best, leaving significant rent hikes on the table. Real estate groups said it was a more reasonable proposal than other municipalities put forward, but they argue that rent control fundamentally harms the housing market and their businesses. 

Montaño told CommonWealth Beacon she did not refile the Boston home rule “because the mayor asked me not to.” Frankly, she said, “it’s not going anywhere.” (Wu’s office did not respond to questions about whether the mayor decided not to pursue the rent control home rule this session.) 

Some of Wu’s allies in City Hall are more eager to back the ballot measure. At-Large City Councilor Henry Santana introduced in September a nonbinding resolution to declare support for the ballot effort. 

“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,” Santana said. Wu endorsed Santana and measure co-sponsors councilors Enrique Pepén and Ben Weber in their city council races this fall. 

The nonbinding resolution, however, faced opposition from some of the moderate councilors and remains in the council’s committee on housing and community development. 

Organizers for the ballot measure appear to be on solid footing so far. The campaign announced on Tuesday it collected more than 120,000 signatures ahead of a Wednesday deadline. While the final number certified by elections officials could be lower, the preliminary haul is well above the nearly 75,000 required to advance to the next stage.

Homes for All has lined up some influential allies. A quintet of labor groups — the SEIU Massachusetts State Council, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, UAW Region 9A MA Cap Council, UFCW Local 1445, and the Boston Teachers Union — last month endorsed the statewide ballot measure. 

Labor leaders say they hear regularly from members that housing costs are increasingly top of mind, and they want to pursue almost any tool imaginable. 

“Without bold action to slow the rising cost of housing, the essential workers who keep Massachusetts going won’t be able to afford to live here,” SEIU’s Dave Foley said in a statement. “By supporting rent stabilization, we’re demanding basic protections against excessive rent hikes to keep people in their homes and stabilize communities all across the state.” 

Landlords and developers have long opposed most rent control ideas, instead contending that Massachusetts must focus on quickly building new housing to rein in skyrocketing prices. 

Now staring down the prospect of one of the nation’s strictest policies, opponents have been quick to mobilize. Last month, the heads of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, and commercial real estate development group NAIOP wrote to mayors and regional chambers of commerce lobbying against the measure. 

NAIOP CEO Tamara Small said she’s already hearing from prospective investors who intend to withdraw their plans if Massachusetts implements rent control. 

“The risk cannot be overstated,” she said in an interview. 

It’s not just the statewide application that concerns the real estate industry. Opponents said preventing rents from increasing beyond inflation, even while waiting for a new tenant, could make it difficult for property owners to absorb rising utility costs or invest in needed repairs. 

The ballot question would also define base rents as what landlords are charging on January 31, 2026 — 10 months before the measure could reach voters. 

Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil said industry groups are prepared to mount a campaign against the ballot question. “We’re fighting for the future of the Commonwealth, our housing future, and so we’ve got to do what it takes,” he said.  

“It’s going to be wildly expensive, but given the irreparable harm this would do, we’re certainly committed to fighting this,” Small added. 

The solution Small would like to see, she said, is simple: “production, production, production.” 

The new rent control ballot measure may clear its signature threshold just a week after a bracing report from the Boston Foundation on the state’s housing crunch. 

Massachusetts renters are navigating a market among the most expensive and constrained in the nation, according to the 2025 Greater Boston Housing Report Card. The Zillow Observed Rent Index, which tracks changes in market rents across housing types, in September found the benchmark rent in Boston’s metro area stood at nearly $3,000 per month without including utilities costs — the fifth highest in the US. 

According to BostonPads, a housing market research and tracking site, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Greater Boston is around $2,600 a month. That’s up about 3.9 percent from two years ago.  

The Boston metro area’s rental market is “especially tight,” according to the Boston Foundation report, trailing every other comparable major metropolitan area with a vacancy rate of just 3 percent. A stable rate is closer to 5.6 percent. 

“Low vacancies also give landlords more market power to push up rents and create the conditions for greater discrimination,” Boston Foundation researchers wrote. “Section 8 voucher holders, for instance, have a much harder time finding rental opportunities in tight rental markets.” 

To deal with existing overcrowding and accommodate future growth, the Healey administration says the state must build at least 222,000 housing units over the next decade. But, permitting and construction in Boston, the most populous city, is lagging according to city and federal data. 

Two years ago, Connolly, the representative from Cambridge, began collecting signatures to advance a ballot question that would have allowed any city or town to regulate rents at whatever maximum increase they each deemed appropriate — a local-option system, not a statewide mandate — as well as to limit evictions, building demolitions, and condominium conversions. 

His campaign fragmented the left. Some progressive groups suggested at the time that there was not enough support for the local-option question to pass or that the movement was not yet unified enough to mount a robust campaign. 

The Homes for All coalition publicly called on Connolly to drop his effort, saying it would “detract from the effort to win the policies our communities need and is not supported by the vast majority of rent control advocates,” the Boston Globe reported in 2023. 

Just two years later, Homes for All is now leading the charge for a rent control ballot question much more dramatic than what Connolly sought. So what changed? 

 “The crisis has continued to intensify,” Chou said. 

“From Springfield to Boston to Worcester to Brockton to Lynn, we are seeing tenants continue to be priced out [and] face huge rent increases. Our communities can’t wait any longer,” she said. “Two years ago, we were really committed to building the infrastructure and building the grassroots people power it would need to take on this campaign, and making sure the question language was as simple, clear, and impactful as possible. We feel like we’re set up now to meet the moment.” 

The coalition has backed local option rent control legislation on Beacon Hill, but for the ballot question, organizers decided to pursue a policy that would immediately affect most renters across the state, not just those in the handful of communities already interested. 

A statewide measure, supporters say, presents voters with a simpler choice: “Do I want rent control in my hometown?” rather than “Do I want a city an hour away to be able to implement rent control after a subsequent vote at the local level?” 

And after witnessing the fierce blowback to the MBTA Communities housing law, which requires cities and towns served by the MBTA system to zone for more multifamily housing, some advocates worried that most communities would remain unwilling to cap rents even if a change to state law cleared the way. 

“We will continue to work with the Legislature, but we can’t wait while corporate landlords continue to buy up buildings across our communities,” Chou said. “We felt we needed to pursue every tool in the toolbox to make sure our folks do not have exorbitant rent increases.” 

Some nervous progressives said Homes for All assured them that internal polling — which the campaign declined to share with CommonWealth Beacon — showed that a statewide mandate could garner significant support among voters. If that’s the case, they say, it makes the political gamble of backing such a measure feel less risky. 

Several insiders said they think faulty logic is at play.  

Dan Cohen, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked on Connolly’s short-lived ballot question two years ago, said his own polling has found that the idea of statewide mandatory rent control does “not test as well as the local option” alternative. His survey two years ago found that the idea of a local rent control option was more popular than a statewide system by eight percentage points. 

And he worries that putting forward a statewide mandate will make the opposition campaign easier, allowing influential real estate groups to savage the ballot measure without coming across as making bad-faith claims. 

“They’re putting forward an instrument that is so blunt that suddenly the real estate industry arguments are not going to be entirely wrong,” Cohen said. 

Connolly recently signed the Homes for All petition and said he will “wholeheartedly” support the question if it makes it to the ballot because he thinks the state’s housing crunch is serious enough to embrace “any way possible to win rent control.” 

But he voiced similar concerns that a statewide mandate would “give the real estate industry the best chance it will have to use the proverbial fear-mongering and scare tactics to try to talk voters out of this.” 

Sen. Jamie Eldridge of Marlborough, another progressive who worked with Connolly on the earlier proposal, also said he’ll support the new campaign even as he worries it will be a “tougher sell.” 

“I will certainly be helpful, but yeah, I will say I do feel that the local option approach is easier to message,” he said. 

Beacon Hill has been decidedly chilly toward efforts to allow rent control to return — even in just a handful of cities. 

The House overwhelmingly rejected reinstating rent control as part of a 2020 economic development bill, and lawmakers had little interest in considering the subject again by the time Wu’s rent stabilization plan took the spotlight. 

Rent control is usually soft-pitched as part of a “toolkit” along with other stabilization measures like housing production plans, eviction and tenant protections, permitting and zoning reforms, and incentives for good landlords.  

“Municipalities often have the most success when they are able to implement the solutions that work best for them,” said Adam Ploetz, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s manager of housing and neighborhood development. He noted two locally tailored proposals before lawmakers this session – one that would allow municipalities to impose a fee on high value real estate sales to fund affordable housing, and another that would give a renter the first chance to purchase their current unit if it goes on the market.  

Those sorts of measures, Ploetz said, “”would allow communities to implement common sense solutions where appropriate.”  

When the statewide rent control ban was headed to the ballot in 1994, only Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline had some form of municipal rent control policy in place. A majority of voters in those three cities voted to keep rent control on the books, but the measure prevailed 51 percent to 49 percent and, as a result, every community had to prohibit the practice. Any local attempt since then to carve a municipality out from the ban needs Beacon Hill approval, which lawmakers have declined to give to Boston, Somerville, and Brookline.  

The outcome left cities and towns in a common holding pattern when it comes to local rent control efforts: A measure is proposed, refined to meet community characteristics, okayed by municipal leaders, and sent up Beacon Hill for consideration from lawmakers. 

The measures from Boston, Brookline, and Somerville, each of which sought to cap rent increases while carving out new construction and smaller buildings, were met with shrugs on Beacon Hill. 

It’s not that rent control has no supporters in the Legislature. A version of the Rogers- Montaño local-option bill filed in the 2023-2024 legislative term notched more than 50 lawmakers as cosponsors. Without buy-in from the top, though, the bill died without clearing a single committee. 

That’s where the ballot question — a tactic activists increasingly use to circumvent an unwilling Legislature — comes into play.  

“If there’s the threat of the voters doing something, sometimes it can spur Beacon Hill to action,” Wilson said. “And maybe the best case scenario here is that Beacon Hill looks at this message of confidence coming out of the folks behind this about the prospects of passage and goes and does something on their own to re-legalize rent stabilization here in Massachusetts.” 

But going directly to voters carries risks. If a campaign fails, it can’t be brought back to the ballot box for at least six years. Lawmakers are also far less likely to approve a policy reform that has been recently rejected by voters. 

“Even if the loss is because of a particular nuance,” said Cohen, the strategist, “traditionally, a loss on the ballot will set something back by decades.” 

Update November 20, 12:30 p.m. – an earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Somerville, not Brookline, as having rent control in 1994.