Our Campaign to Protect Housing in Massachusetts

In November 2026, people across Massachusetts will vote on up to a dozen ballot questions, including a potentially disastrous rent control proposal.

I’m proud to serve as Chair of Housing for Massachusetts, a growing coalition of small property owners, local business leaders, mayors, city councilors, and everyday citizens who understand what this statewide rent control ballot question would really mean for our communities.

We just kicked off what will be a long, intense – and, I believe, victorious – campaign to protect housing in Massachusetts. Our coalition agrees with most people across the state that there is a housing affordability crisis. That’s why so many of us have spent years working with the Governor, the Legislature, and local leaders on solutions that remove barriers to building more affordable and market-rate housing. Wherever you see housing prices fall – places like Austin and Phoenix – you see one common factor: they built new supply.

This ballot question moves in the opposite direction. It would:

• Apply, with narrow exceptions, to virtually every rental home in all 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts – from a single-family you rent out in Yarmouth, to a condo in Boston, to a triple-decker in Springfield.

• Cap rent increases to inflation (CPI), which has averaged about 2.58% over the last 20 years – regardless of what happens to property taxes, insurance, or maintenance costs. There are no waivers for renovations or needed improvements, and no local board to appeal to.

Only three other states have passed statewide rent control. All three allow significantly higher rent growth than this proposal, and all three allow vacant units to reset to market rates. This ballot question does neither – and it even locked in baseline rents already – on January 31, 2026.

We’ve seen how this story ends, both here in Massachusetts and in places like St. Paul, Minnesota and Montgomery County, Maryland, where rent control led to drastic drops in new housing construction while neighboring areas without it kept building. We cannot afford a policy that constricts supply when we desperately need more homes.

Over the coming months, I’ll be using this space to share data, stories from small property owners and renters, and practical alternatives that actually increase housing.

If you care about the future of housing in Massachusetts, I invite you to follow along, weigh in, and share your experience in the comments.

We need real solutions to our housing crisis – not broken policies that have already failed.