Fight for Housing Justice & Immigration Justice

On Monday, the House voted on key housing amendments to its economic development bill.

State reps overwhelmingly ignored housing justice activists, voting AGAINST allowing municipalities to impose real estate transfer fees to combat speculation and raise money for affordable housing, AGAINST allowing municipalities to pass rent-stabilizing regulations, and AGAINST making it easier for municipalities to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances.

Some of these state reps — embarrassingly — voted against the text of bills they co-sponsored earlier in the session.

The Senate will be taking up its version of an economic development bill tomorrow, so that means there is another opportunity to fight for housing justice and immigration justice.

Can you call your senators in support of the following amendments? 

#2 (Crighton): Work and Family Mobility, which eliminates immigration status as a barrier to obtaining a driver’s license

#6 (Crighton): Tenant’s Right of First Refusal, which guarantees the right of refusal for tenants when a large building is up for sale or foreclosed

#47 (Boncore): Promoting Housing Opportunity and Mobility through Eviction Sealing (HOMES), which seals evictions when they are pending, until and unless an allegation is proven; seals all no-fault evictions, and seals all evictions after 3 years

#57 (Cyr): Compromise local option transfer fee on high cost home sales to support low and middle income housing, which enables municipalities to impose a real estate transfer fee on sales above $1 million, with money going to affordable housing

#96 (Collins): City of Boston Inclusionary Development Policy and Linkage Fees, which incorporates Boston’s Inclusionary Development Policy (requires affordable units within new residential projects) and Linkage Fees (requires payments from large commercial developments to fund affordable housing and job training) into Boston’s zoning code and allows for future rate adjustments 

#175 (DiDomenico): Tenant Right to Counsel Pilot, which establishes a right to counsel pilot program to provide full legal representation to eligible individuals vulnerable to evictions

#249 (Jehlen): Supporting Affordable Housing With A Local Option For A fee To Be Applied To Certain Real Estate Transactions, which enables cities and towns to impose transfer fees on real estate sales with appropriate exemptions (e.g., for low- and middle-income homeowners)

Housing Stability Is an Essential Part of the Cure for COVID

The following testimony was submitted to the Joint Committee on Housing.

Thank you chairs and members of the committee for reading our testimony.

As municipal leaders scramble desperately to find solutions to the onslaught of evictions they know are headed their way, the people must turn to the state legislature to quell the oncoming tsunami of homelessness that will destroy families and traumatize children if the state legislature does not act.

We urge you to pass S2831/H.4878 in order to end the threat of evictions posed by the sudden end of the current eviction moratorium in October. If families are required to pay back rent for almost half a year, there is no way those living paycheck to paycheck will be able to stay in their homes. If we don’t provide a solution to this problem, we will have a catastrophe unlike any we have confronted before, as families are turned out of their homes en masse.

Please vote yes to allow a year long moratorium on evictions to give families the time they need to get back on their feet and forgive them their back rent since living paycheck to paycheck will not allow them the ability to accumulate the savings they will need to pay their back rent. There is no perfect solution to the housing emergency that confronts us, but this bill is the best solution to a difficult problem. It ensures housing stability for renters while also providing funds for smaller landlords who are also victims of the pandemic economy.

If you pass this into law, it would say a lot about who we are as a state and as human beings. Please show the compassion and responsibility to our citizens that we want to see in other states. You have an opportunity to show leadership to the entire country. Please pass S2831/H.4878.

Thank you,

Caroline Bays

Board President, Progressive Massachusetts

Massachusetts House Votes Down Proposals to Help Renters, Promote Affordable Housing

When Governor Charlie Baker sent an economic development bill to the MA Legislature, he included his “Housing Choices” legislation, which had been stalled as a standalone bill. The “Housing Choices” bill addresses one aspect of Massachusetts’s affordable housing crisis: the fact that new construction is relatively rare in the suburbs due to the prevalence of single-family zoning. If you can only build one housing unit per lot, it makes it more difficult to respond to a growing population or growing demand. Currently, zoning changes (such as those that would approve multifamily housing construction) require a 2/3 approval from local government. Baker’s bill, which the MA House retained in their economic development package, would lower that to a simple majority.

The need for more supply, though, is just one part of the problem. There is no guarantee that the new supply would be affordable, nor that the new supply would not push up rents for current tenants, thus running the risk of displacement. There isn’t even a guarantee that any new housing will be built at all (it’s a removal of a barrier rather than promise of new construction).

That being said, as an MIT researcher recently noted in CommonWealth Mag, all this means is that we need to think comprehensively when we approach the affordable housing crisis: we do need zoning reform, but we also need stronger protections for existing tenants. Tenant protections will not address the need for supply: only new construction can. Zoning reform will not address displacement: you need tenant protections for that. This was also an essential takeaway of the book Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty on the housing crisis in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, the MA House voted down efforts at striking such a balance.

Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) filed and roll-called three amendments to strike a better balance.

First was his amendment 34, which would have enabled municipalities to impose transfer fees on real estate transactions to fund affordable housing. Cities like Boston, Somerville, and Nantucket have filed home rule petitions in order to be able to do so because state law prohibits them from doing so on their own. To be clear, this amendment would simply allow municipalities to pass their own laws to address the affordable housing crisis–and to craft whatever exemptions to the transfer fee’s application as they see appropriate.

The House voted 130 to 29 against it. 9 state reps endorsed *the very same bill* but voted NO here: Barrett, Driscoll, Garballey, Gonzalez, Keefe, Khan, Livingstone, Miranda, and Santiago.

The only argument put forth against it on the floor was from Rep. Ken Gordon (D-Bedford), who said that there is already enough money for affordable housing (false) and that a transfer fee would hurt low and middle-income homeowners (also false, given the allowance of exemptions).

He also filed and roll-called an amendment that reflected the text of his Tenant Protection Act, which would remove the prohibition on rent control and enable municipalities to pass other tenant protections, such as just cause eviction ordinances or limitations on condo conversions. Again, simply allowing municipalities to pass their own laws in response to the affordable housing crisis.

The House voted 136 to 23 against it. Five legislators who co-sponsored the very same bill voted against the amendment: Devers, Hawkins, LeBoeuf, Miranda, and Santiago.

7.27.20 House Vote on RC

Finally, Connolly filed and roll-called an amendment to lower the threshold for approval of inclusionary zoning ordinances to a simple majority. Inclusionary zoning, i.e., the requirement that a certain percentage of new construction meet an affordability threshold, was not included in the list of zoning changes that would no longer need a supermajority.

Given that many suburbs don’t want to build housing at all, there is likely not a rush to adopt inclusionary zoning, but if a suburb were so forward-thinking, it should be able to.

The House voted 139 to 19 against allowing that. Again, five representatives who co-sponsored *the same bill* voted against it: Gentile, Hawkins, Hendricks, LeBoeuf, and Livingstone.

7.27.20 House Vote on Inclusionary Zoning

“The Democratic Party’s Most Confounding Primary” — The Intercept

PM elections committee chair Jonathan Cohn was recently quoted on the MA Senate primary in The Intercept:

“One thing we’ve pointed out is that in 2018, he had the choice to support progressive women of color — Ayanna Pressley and Nika Elugardo — but he didn’t,” said Jonathan Cohn, a leader with Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide advocacy group that has endorsed Markey. In those races, Kennedy endorsed incumbents Capuano and Jeffrey Sanchez, who both lost. (This cycle Elugardo has endorsed Markey, and Pressley is staying out of the race.)

The House Can Strengthen Its Police Reform Bill

Black Lives Matter

Yesterday, the MA House released its police reform bill, and needless to say, we’re disappointed. Although there are some improvements on the Senate bill (stronger language on facial surveillance and chokeholds), the House punted on reforming qualified immunity, weakened language on reducing the school-to-prison pipeline, eliminated the Justice Reinvestment Fund, and dropped a whole section devoted to controlling the transfer of military equipment to police forces.

The House will be voting THIS WEEK, so your state rep needs to be hearing from YOU that you want a stronger bill. We’ve outlined some key amendments below. (Click here to contact your reps.)

Making Sure that Schools Are Safe & Welcoming Spaces

#1 (Sabadosa): Ensuring Public Accountability for School Policing, which provides school districts with discretion about whether or not to hire school resource officers

#88 (Elugardo): Protecting Students From Profiling, which disrupts the school-to-prison pipeline by preventing the transmission of student information to law enforcement agencies

Centering Public Safety around Community

#46 (Keefe): Justice Reinvestment and Workforce Development Fund, which would reallocate an equivalent sum of money from savings from the Department of Corrections into a fund for job training and workforce development for communities disproportionately targeted by the criminal-legal system

#71 (Sabadosa): Alternatives to Policing, which establishes a Community Emergency Response Team consisting of trained social workers under the Department of Public Health to divert certain 911 calls to

#166 (Vargas): Clarifying Expungement, which has the potential to remove major barriers for thousands of young people including access to jobs, housing, education, and other opportunities

#99 (Barber): Work and Family Mobility, which ensures that immigration status is not a barrier to obtaining a driver’s license

Demilitarizing Police & Strengthening Regulations on the Use of Force

#92 (Elugardo) Pre-Emptive De-Escalation, which requires police departments to make plans for de-escalation in advance of protests

#97 (Robinson): No-Knock Warrants, which bans the use of no-knock raids

#131 (Lewis): Restrictions on the Acquisition on Military Grade Controlled Property, which imposes limitations and democratic oversight requirements on the procurement of military weaponry by state and local enforcement

#194 (Robinson): Use of force tactics, which bans the use of rubber bullets and attack dogs by police

#200 (Connolly): Tear Gas, which bans the use of tear gas

Increasing Police Accountability

#77 (Vargas): Preponderance of Evidence as the Burden of Proof for License Suspension and Revocation, which changes the burden of proof used by the Massachusetts Police Standards and Training Commission to suspend/revoke licenses from “clear and convincing evidence” to “a preponderance of the evidence”

#100 (Provost): Addressing Direct Civil Rights Violations, ​which would allow victims of police brutality and other civil rights violations to bring claims in state court for direct violations of their rights — without having to prove that their rights were violated by means of threats, intimidation or coercion.

​#176 (Hecht): Reforming qualified immunity for law enforcement officers, which would enable victims of police brutality to hold officers accountable in court by allowing officers to claim immunity only if it was clearly established that their conduct was lawful.​

#210 (Malia): Officer identification, which requires all officers to have a badge with their name, identification number, and agency visible, with violations subject to suspension or other discipline

Independence of the Police Standards & Accreditation Commission

#95 (Robinson): Makeup of POSAC, which ensures that the civilian members of the commission are not family members of law enforcement

#96 (Robinson): Designation of POSAC Chair, which takes away the Governor’s ability to appoint the commission’s chair and allows the commission to appoint its own

#202 (Decker): Police Standards Commission, which eliminates the guaranteed law enforcement seats on the commission

Preventing a Gross Misallocation of Funds

#86 (Miranda): Prioritizing Social Equity Spending of Marijuana Revenue, which stipulates that if any money is redirected from the Marijuana Regulation Fund to the Police Training Fund, an equal or greater amount must be transferred to a social equity training and assistance fund

#94 (Robinson): Police Training Fund & #211 (Vega): Marijuana Regulation Fund, which strike the language redirecting funds from the Marijuana Regulation Fund to the Police Training Fund


Protecting the Human Rights of the Incarcerated

#2 (Sabadosa): Use of Force within the DOC, which would require the Department of Corrections and sheriffs’ offices to provide a commission on the use of force within prisons and jails with necessary documentation to conduct oversight

#98 (Sabadosa): Decarceration, which would require the release of individuals who are currently in pre-trial detainment or under incarceration if they are a member of a population deemed especially vulnerable by the CDC, are eligible for medical parole, are almost finished with their sentence, or are only being detained due to inability to pay bail or due to minor violations of parole

Go Big or Don’t Go Home

In a mere eleven days — on Friday, July 31st, at 11:59 pm — the legislative session in the Massachusetts State House comes to an end.

The bills that didn’t make it past the finish line this year will disappear into the ether or return like a phoenix from the ashes in January next year, only to face the same grueling process.

But there are many policies that can’t wait until January. Indeed, passing them now is already far later than should have been done. And, frankly, the Legislature shouldn’t get to leave session until they finish.

What priorities are we talking about?

  • Passing the Safe Communities Act so that state and local law enforcement aren’t being deputized as ICE agents
  • Passing the Work and Family Mobility Act because mobility is a basic right, regardless of one’s citizenship status
  • Passing the ROE Act because MA needs to strengthen reproductive rights here at home as they remain under attack on the federal level
  • Passing the 100% Renewable Energy Act because we can’t keep stumbling forward into climate chaos
  • Passing Emergency Paid Sick Time so that no worker has to choose between their health and their job security
  • Passing guaranteed housing stability for at least one more year ​because if we want people to stay at home, they need a home to go back to
  • Passing a budget that raises Progressive Revenue by making sure that corporations and the rich are paying their fair share

The Legislature can’t keep punting session after session and patting themselves on the back.

Can you call or email your state legislators about taking real action before the session ends — or staying in until they do?

Go Big or Don't Go Home

Take Action: The Senate Votes Tomorrow on Policing Reform

Black Lives Matter

Tomorrow, the MA Senate will be voting on a bill to reform how policing is done in Massachusetts.

Although it contains many important provisions, it also leaves far too much on the table, and it contains language that undercuts the ability of the reforms to provide meaningful change.

Here’s how you can help.

Tell your senator to support Amendments #10, 21, 27, 31, 37, 64, 65, 67, 75, 81, 108, 113, and 119. These amendments will reinvest in communities, limit the scope and presence of police, ban dangerous police tactics, and protect the rights of the incarcerated.

Find their number here and give them a call.

Tweet at them to support the amendments.

Send them an email in support of these amendments.

What These Amendments Do

Reinvesting in Communities

#81: Removing The Cap On Justice Reinvestment (Jehlen): The bill reinvests money from the Department of Corrections into a fund for job training and workforce development for communities disproportionately targeted by the criminal-legal system. The fund, based on the savings produced by reduced incarceration rates, could reach as high as $38 million a year, but the bill caps the fund at $10 million. This amendment would remove the cap.

Limiting the Scope & Presence of Police

Amendment #10: Promoting racial justice by decriminalizing homelessness (Rausch), which guarantees the right of those experiencing homelessness to use public spaces in the same manner as any other person without discrimination based on their housing status

Amendment #31: Banning pretextual stops (Chandler), which prohibits a practice too often employed by police to harass Black and Brown drivers

Amendment #108: Protecting Students from Profiling (Jehlen), which disrupts the school-to-prison pipeline by preventing the transmission of student information to a Fusion Center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or any other agency that keeps a gang database

Banning dangerous police tactics

Amendment #64: Relative to Facial recognition (Creem): The Senate bill bans the use of facial surveillance for law enforcement for only one year. This amendment extends that ban until legislation is passed to implement such a ban permanently.

Amendment #65: Banning tear gas and other chemical weapons (Rausch): The Senate bill bill allows tear gas to be used in certain circumstances, offering no real deterrent to its use. Police should never use tear gas or chemical weapons against civilians. This amendment would prohibit the use of tear gas and chemical weapons altogether.

Amendment #67: Banning choke holds (Eldridge): Under the extremely narrow definition in the bill, the restraint used against George Floyd could be found lawful until the moment he was rendered unconscious and killed. This amendment clarifies that all neck restraints are prohibited.

Amendment #75: Clarifying the Reasonableness of an Officer’s Actions (Eldridge), which creates a higher standard for the use of force

Amendment #119: Banning no-knock warrants (Hinds): The Senate bill allows no-knock warrants in certain circumstances. Breonna Taylor was murdered after police broke down her front door without warning in the middle of the night under the auspices of a no-knock warrant, and no-knock warrants are disproportionately used to terrorize Black and Brown communities. This amendment would ban them altogether.

Protecting the Rights of the Incarcerated

Amendment #21: Strengthening visitation of incarcerated persons (Rausch), which removes harmful limitations on visitation imposed by the Department of Corrections

Amendment #27: Correctional Officers (Eldridge), which prevents decertified officers from working in prisons and jails

Amendment #37: Transitional Assistance for Wrongfully Convicted Persons (Jehlen), which guarantees $5,000 in transitional financial assistance as well as access to physical and mental health services upon release for those who have been wrongfully convicted

Amendment #113: Prison Use of Force Records (Eldridge), which ensures that an inmate and the inmate’s legally designated representative shall have the right to obtain a copy of all records relating to any use of force incident involving the inmate

Take Action: Extend Sick Time. Extend the Eviction Moratorium. Extend the Session.

COVID graphic

TL;DR: Tell your legislators to extend paid sick time, extend the eviction moratorium, and extend the legislative session.

Today marks Phase 3 of Republican Governor Charlie Baker’s reopening plan. That means that movie theaters (??), casinos (??), and gyms (??!?) are allowed to reopen today — even as states around the country are seeing resurgences of the COVID-19 outbreak.

And to make matters worse, this reopening is happening without any new, enforceable protections for workers.

If we want to have a successful, equitable recovery, then workers who are sick or are taking care of loved ones need to be able to stay home without fear of losing their job. Massachusetts’s 2014 earned sick time law does not provide enough hours to meet the scale of the crisis, and the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act has big coverage gaps that leave millions of front-line workers without paid sick time.

Massachusetts needs to pass Emergency Paid Sick Time legislation to ensure that all workers can take paid sick time during this crisis.

And for people to be able to stay home, they need a home to go back to. The eviction and foreclosure moratorium signed in April is set to expire next month, August 18. That means that, if the Legislature does not take action, working-class families across the state could face a wave of evictions during a possible COVID resurgence.

Evictions and foreclosures are bad for public health in the best of times. They are even more dangerous now, and the instability and insecurity is likely to hit Black and Brown families the hardest.

But, again the Legislature can take action here by extending the eviction/foreclosure moratorium, expanding mortgage deferment protections, and stabilizing both renters and small property owners.

And time is short. The Legislative session is set to end at the end of the month. If the Legislature does not finish the vital business of protecting workers and addressing the backlog of important pre-COVID legislative priorities, then legislators should stay in session until they finish.

Here’s where you come in.

(1) Call your legislators in support of these two bills & call on them to support extending the legislative session:

  • S.2701 / H.4700: An Act relative to emergency paid sick time
  • SD.2992 / HD.5166: An Act to guarantee housing stability during the COVID-19 emergency and recovery 

(2) Email your legislators in support of these bills and extending the session.

(3) Share this email with five friends.