GET THE FACTS
Vote NO on Rent Control
A proposed 2026 ballot question would overturn a law passed by Massachusetts voters and impose the nation’s most restrictive and damaging rent control agenda across ALL 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth.
We’ve already been down this road. After more than two decades of rent control, Massachusetts voters recognized the damage this policy did to our communities. Across the state, homeowners and renters alike voted to repeal and ban rent control in 1994. This new proposal is a step back in time and will only worsen the current housing shortage.
Massachusetts voters in 1994 banned rent control for a simple reason: it doesn’t work.
Study after study, including research from MIT about the impacts in Cambridge, has found that rent control discourages investment in housing, leading to fewer homes, less home and building maintenance, and lower property values.
In the 1970s, Massachusetts faced a severe housing crisis and passed rent control to try and fix it. But rent control only made things worse. We cannot let history repeat itself.
On this site you can learn more about the proposed question, the history of rent control in Massachusetts, and the reality of how similar policies are currently playing out in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and New York.
We need real solutions for our housing crisis: not broken policies that have already failed. Just say no to rent control.
Follow the Research
Study by MIT researchers: “Cambridge experienced an overall investment boom after the end of rent control…Annual investment expenditures roughly doubled…Our results provide evidence that residential spillovers are large and important in housing markets, and suggest that public policies related to housing should consider not only direct impacts but also indirect impacts on neighboring properties and residents.”
Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Journal of Political Economy
Study by Stanford Researchers: “…We find that rent control led to a 15 percentage point decline in the number of renters living in treated buildings…This 15 percentage point reduction in the rental supply of small multi-family housing likely led to rent increases in the long run…the passage of rent control ultimately led to a housing stock which caters to higher income individuals…Taking all these points together, it appears rent control has actually contributed to the gentrification of San Francisco, the exact opposite of the policy’s intended goal. Indeed, by simultaneously bringing in higher income residents and preventing displacement of minorities, rent control has contributed to widening income inequality in the city.”
The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco
American Economic Review
Greater Portland Board of REALTORS®: “The analysis finds that limiting annual rent increases below prevailing market rates reduces the city’s total taxable valuation by an estimated 3.2% to 5.4%. This reduction is primarily driven by the lower assessed values of income-generating properties subject to rent control. As a result, a higher mill rate is necessary to meet the revenue needs of Portland’s proposed FY2026 budget and beyond. Assuming no changes to budget levels, this increase in the mill rate would lead to an additional annual tax burden of approximately $220 to $380 (a 3.3% to 5.7% increase) for the median-value homeowner. Cumulatively, over the FY2026–FY2030 period, this represents an added tax cost of between $1,240 and $2,100.”
Portland, Maine Rent Control Report
Greater Portland Board of REALTORS®
Study by University of Illinois-Chicago researcher: “Increasing the number of rent-controlled units in a metropolitan area relates to increases in housing units categorized as both severely and moderately inadequate…including the presence of cockroaches, broken plaster and chipped paint, exposed electrical wiring, the presence of mold, and problems with unit air temperature. Increasing the number of rent-controlled units is associated with increasing neighborhood criminal activity, more trash in the street, and perception of reduced school quality.”
The Ripple Effect: Rent Regulation and Its Effects on Housing and Neighborhood Quality.
The National Apartment Association
Journal of Housing Economics: “…Increases to rent control restrictiveness also reduce the total number of rental units…with our already constrained supply and construction rates not keeping up with demand, reducing this overall supply might harm households with low incomes in the long-run…By design, rent control protects incumbency and provides benefits to those living in rent-controlled units, and it is not targeted to households with the most need since it is not means tested…Over time, even if residents in rent controlled units benefit, the policy may not be distributing benefits equitably if people with middle or high incomes are disproportionately housed in controlled units, and if…people not lucky enough to obtain a rent-controlled unit face constrained supply and increasing rents.”
Rent Control and the Supply of Affordable Housing
Journal of Housing Economics
Journal of Urban Economics: “My results indicate that the intuition presented in simple micro-economic models is correct. Rent control decreases the quantity of rental units supplied, as well as rent and unit maintenance. It also lengthens renter stays.”
Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control?
Journal of Urban Economics
The Wall Street Journal: “St. Paul’s strict 3% rent-control ordinance led to a 79% drop in apartment-building permits and an at least 6% decline in property values. Minneapolis, without rent control, saw apartment permits rise nearly fourfold in early 2022 from the year before. St. Paul amended its ordinance to exempt new construction, but developers report significant project delays and fewer units planned.”
What the Twin Cities Tell Us About Fixing the Housing Crisis
Wall Street Journal
Housing Analyst Jay Parsons: “Poof! Multifamily building permits have almost entirely evaporated in one of the nation’s most affluent areas — Montgomery County, MD. But in this case, don’t blame high interest rates, high supply or weak rents. Instead, there’s one clear driver…Rent control.
Montgomery County enacted rent control in July 2024. Look at the before and after.
In the first eight months of 2024, Montgomery County issued building permits for 2,093 multifamily units. That almost matched the total for all other Maryland counties combined. In the first eight months of 2025, Montgomery County issued building permits for only 54 multifamily units. By comparison, all other Maryland counties issued permits for 2,248 units.”
Impact of Rent Control on Montgomery County, MD
Jay Parsons
Rental Housing Association of Washington: “…Rent control appears to be having a negative impact on housing quality. Perhaps an explanation for this trend could be that landlords are less incentivized to improve/maintain a unit when the current occupants have a monthly rent cost that is fixed thus there is not an avenue to increase income from the property. …In the current form, when controlling for other factors, a house under rent control is more likely to have damages which suggests rent control is not fulfilling the quality housing portion of its goal. This could indicate that rent control policy could use a change in methodology or implementation because while the current methods are creating affordable housing, the housing is not of the same quality of a similar house that is not under rent control policy.”
An Analysis of the Impact of Rent Control on New York City Housing
Computational Statistics