By Andrew Brinker | The Boston Globe | February 4, 2026
One sweltering day last summer, more than 100 tenants, advocates, and local officials crowded onto the Grand Staircase in the Massachusetts State House and told stories about the worst of this state’s housing crisis.
They talked about elderly tenants evicted from their longtime homes, single mothers living in their cars, and rent increases of more than $1,000. Their chants echoed off the tall ceilings.
“We need rent control,” the crowd shouted. “And we need it now!”
Lawmakers ignored them. Aides scurried by with barely a glance. It was an apt metaphor for how Beacon Hill has treated calls for rent control for years.
Lawmakers may not be able to ignore them much longer.
A ballot question that would enact the nation’s strictest rent control policy across all of Massachusetts is heading toward voters in November. Early polling suggests a majority of voters favor rent control, and advocates believe they finally have something they haven’t had in a long time: leverage.
The campaign represents a huge and costly gamble for both advocates and opponents alike.
While the measure passing would mark a huge win for tenant advocates, real estate interests are girding for battle, pledging to spend tens of millions of dollars to paint the measure as a killer for the state’s housing market. Should the measure go down to defeat, it would likely set rent control efforts back for years.
Some supporters are signaling that they’re open to, and may even prefer, a compromise, urging Beacon Hill to craft legislation that would allow a version of rent control while avoiding a bruising and unpredictable ballot fight. And several legislators are at least pitching the idea of passing a more moderate policy to leadership and their colleagues.
“I’m reminding my colleagues that at the end of the day, it’s incumbent on us as legislators to pass good policy,” said Representative Mike Connolly, a longtime rent control supporter who represents Cambridge and Somerville. “Some may look at the ballot question and decide it’s out of our hands. But reasonable rent control and stabilization policies are proven effective policies. We shouldn’t wait the next 11 months for this to get to the ballot.”
Rent control has gained momentum across the United States in recent years as several cities and states, including California and Oregon, have passed so-called rent stabilization policies — rent caps tied to the rate of inflation — in response to soaring housing costs.
Similar bills to revive rent control in Massachusetts, typically by allowing communities that want it to design their own rent caps, are filed every session — most never make it out of committee. In 2023, a high-profile push by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to allow Boston to cap rent growth based on inflation, with a maximum of 10 percent, was effectively ignored by the Legislature.
In August, tenant group Homes For All raised the stakes, filing a ballot question that, if approved, would limit annual rent increases statewide to the Consumer Price Index or 5 percent, whichever is lower. The move caught some rent control supporters by surprise. Under the policy, the average annual rent increase allowed over the last two decades would have been 2.6 percent.
The coalition wanted a policy that would actually keep rents down and figured a strict cap would capture Beacon Hill’s attention.
A 2023 poll found some 65 percent of voters would support a ballot question empowering local authorities to make their own decisions about rent control. And in a poll conducted last year by Suffolk University and the Boston Globe, more than 62 percent of voters said they would support a statewide rent cap like the one Homes For All has proposed.
Like all ballot questions, the measure will get a hearing, likely in the spring. Legislators then have until June, when the final round of signatures for ballot measures are due, to decide whether to pass a measure, propose a compromise, or take no action.
Some progressive legislators who support rent control, including Connolly and Senator Jamie Eldridge, have shopped the idea of a legislative compromise to their colleagues and House and Senate leadership.
Such ballot question deals have happened in the past. Most notably, in 2018, Beacon Hill evaded three ballot measures with the so-called grand bargain, which raised the minimum wage, ensured paid medical and family leave, and eliminated premium pay for Sunday workers.
But on rent control so far, there have been no high-level conversations among House and Senate leadership about the ballot question, several legislators said, and the Joint Committee on Housing this year is focused on passing legislation aimed at stimulating housing production.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Ron Mariano said in a statement he “has long argued that rent control, and specifically the proposal that could go before voters in the fall, will stifle housing production, exacerbating the main challenge at the root of the affordability crisis here in Massachusetts.”
A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka said she has not taken a position on the ballot question.
Some rent control supporters are concerned that advocates may achieve the opposite of what they intend: The policy may be too aggressive, they fear, and legislators may not feel obligated to engage with it.
Homes for All executive director Carolyn Chou said the group would be open to dropping the ballot question if legislators pass a “strong” rent control policy. But the bar would be high.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with legislators to pass strong rent stabilization protections,” Chou said. “For us, this isn’t about winning an ideological fight. It’s about delivering real results for the tenants that our organizations work with every day and who are dealing with double-digit rent increases. And if legislators don’t act, we’re ready to go all the way to the ballot.”
The risk, of course, is that if the real estate industry can convince voters to defeat the measure, it could effectively end the conversation about rent control for years. Ballot measures can’t be refiled for a decade. And lawmakers often take their cue from voters; many on Beacon Hill still point to the 1994 statewide vote outlawing rent control in Massachusetts as a final word on the issue.
Real estate groups have already begun framing the measure as extreme. At an event last week launching their campaign against the ballot question — Housing for Massachusetts — they said the policy would be a “devastating blow to housing creation in Massachusetts.” They signaled they would likely fight any more moderate approach in the Legislature as well.
“When a ballot question is this poorly written and will do this much harm to every community in the Commonwealth, it is hard to see a path to any sort of compromise,” Conor Yunits, chair of the campaign, said in a statement.
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