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THE RENT MANDATE

BALLOT QUESTION FACT CHECK

Download: The Fact Check One Pager
Download: The Truth About Rent Mandates

Activists are pushing a 2026 ballot question that would repeal a law passed by Massachusetts voters and impose one of the nation’s most restrictive and damaging statewide rent mandate  across ALL 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. They make a number of false claims about their proposal, so let’s do a quick Fact Check.

Myth #1: The ballot question caps rent increases at 5%.

FACT: This ballot question limits rent increases to the annual change in CPI, which averages 2.5%1. That is the real rent mandate.

Property owner costs growing much faster than CPI: In 2025 alone, Massachusetts property taxes increased an average of 5.1%2. From 2018-2023, home insurance premiums in Massachusetts jumped 22.8%3.

This question provides no pathway for property owners to recover the costs of upgrades or renovations: As one rent mandate supporter told the media last year, “If [property owners] find themselves in a position where they can’t maintain their properties, they don’t really have an out except for basically condemning them…”4

Myth #2: This ballot question allows cities and towns the choice to opt out of rent mandates.

FACT: This ballot question imposes rent mandates in all 351 cities and towns in Mass. There is no opt-in or opt-out.

One-size-fits-all: Rent mandates would be automatically imposed in all 351 Massachusetts communities, from Cape Cod to Boston to the Berkshires, regardless of individual community needs or wants.

Strips local control from cities and towns: As one State Senator, generally supportive of rent mandates, said at a recent hearing, “In the district I represent…are certainly some communities that would like to institute rent control…There are also many that don’t… And I do think that often communities at the local level have that best discretion.” That’s not what this question allows.

Myth #3: This ballot question is “revenue neutral.”

FACT: This ballot question would cut property values across Massachusetts by $300 billion over ten years - forcing cities and towns to cut services or raise taxes on homeowners.5

A strain on property values and municipal budgets: A 2026 study from the Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis found that this rent mandate ballot question would shrink the residential property tax base by anywhere from 6-9% in municipalities across the Commonwealth.6

A 14% drop in local revenue7: These effects would be permanent, and amount to a sustained loss of investment for homeowners and a durably shrunken tax base8 to fund schools, police, fire departments, and municipal services that communities rely on.

Myth #4: The ballot question “supports small landlords.”

FACT: A person or family who rents out even just one or two units in a house or small building that they own but don’t live in will be subject to this law–treated the same way as if they were a Wall Street hedge fund with 10,000 apartments.

Small landlords will be devastated: The ballot question only exempts buildings of 4 units or fewer that are OWNER-OCCUPIED. Small property owners, who account for more than 60% of all rentals in MA9, will not be able to invest in their properties or even keep up with rising costs.

“Pushing small landlords towards extinction”: As the Wall Street Journal reported in March, similar policies in New York are leading “giant multifamily firms [to] take over more New York City apartments while mom-and-pop landlords struggle to stay afloat.”10

Myth #5: This ballot question “encourages housing production.”

FACT: Investors and developers are already pulling out of Massachusetts. Governor Maura Healey opposes this ballot question explicitly because it is ALREADY leading to less housing production11 in the state.

We have seen this in MA before: When Massachusetts had rent mandates the first time, the City of Cambridge lost 2500 units of “renter occupied housing” in just ten years. In the three years after rent mandates were repealed, the Boston area rental market gained 15,000 more rental units than it would have had if the mandates had stayed in place.12

Other states have seen the same result: In St. Paul, MN, rent mandates led to a 79% drop in new construction, while Minneapolis, with no mandates, continued to grow.13 In Montgomery Co., MD, new multifamily permits fell from 2093 in 2024 to just 54 in 2025 after rent mandates, even as the rest of the state built more housing.14

Myth #6: This ballot question will make housing more affordable for everyone.

FACT: This ballot question will force property owners to raise rents to the maximum every year, slow the creation of new housing15, reduce maintenance16, and limit turnover17 - all of which will lead to fewer rental options, lower quality, and rents that always increase.

No vacancy decontrol: Under this measure, vacant units remain under the rent mandate law18: meaning that property owners can never reset to market, forcing them to raise rents to the maximum allowed every year just to pay their bills and protect the value of their property.19

Rent mandates are a failed policy and a step back in time: Study after study finds that rent mandate policies have negative implications for communities and do not deliver on the promises of progressives20. Massachusetts has already been down this road, and voters across the state voted to ban rent mandates because they don’t work.

Citations

  1. Average annual CPI change 2006 through 2025, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “Consumer Price Index, 1913-.” Available here
  2. Massachusetts Department of Revenue, “FY2025 Tax Levies, Assessed Values and Tax Rates.” Available here
  3. Realtor.com, “Here’s How Much Home Insurance Rates Have Risen in Every State,” 4/29/2024. Available here
  4. YourArlington, “Rent control could soon be in the hands of Massachusetts voters,” 12/5/2025. Available here
  5. Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026. Available here
  6. Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026. Available here
  7. Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026. Available here
  8. Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026. Available here
  9. Small Property Owners Association, “Who are small property owners?” Available here
  10. Wall Street Journal, “Mamdani’s Rental Plan Risks Pushing Small Landlords Toward Extinction,” 3/16/2026. Available here
  11. Boston Globe, “Healey urges voters to reject rent control, income tax-cut ballot questions,” 3/12/2026. Available here
  12. City of Cambridge, “Comparison of Cambridge, MA U.S. Census Short Form Results: 1980, 1990 & 2000.” Available here
  13. Wall Street Journal, “What the Twin Cities Tell Us About Fixing the Housing Crisis,” 12/15/2025. Available here
  14.  Jay Parsons, LinkedIn post, December 2025. Available here
  15. Autor, David H., et al., “Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” Journal of Political Economy, 2014. Available here
  16. Sims, David P., “Out of Control: What can we learn from the end of rent control in Massachusetts?,” Journal of Urban Economics 61 (2007)
  17. Sims, David P., “Out of Control: What can we learn from the end of rent control in Massachusetts?,” Journal of Urban Economics 61 (2007)
  18. Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026 Available here
  19. Wall Street Journal, “What the Twin Cities Tell Us About Fixing the Housing Crisis,” 12/15/2025. Available here
  20.  See, for example, Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, “Untold Threat: Rent Control Ballot Question Will Imperil Municipal Budgets,” March 2026 Available here