Rent Control and TOPA are Vital Parts of a Housing Policy Toolkit

Green affordable housing

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge a favorable report for S.1299 / H.2103: An Act enabling cities and towns to stabilize rents and protect tenants, S.872 / H.1304: An Act enabling local options for tenant protections, and S.880 / H.1350: An Act to guarantee a tenant’s first right of refusal.

Massachusetts has a lot to offer, but that does little if people can’t afford to live here. The US News & World Report’s annual state rankings put Massachusetts at #45 in affordability. [1] A worker earning minimum wage in Massachusetts would have to work 91 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at market rate. [2] 

Clearly, Massachusetts has an affordable housing crisis. This is unsustainable. It has led to expanding economic inequality, increased homelessness, and damage to our economy, as talented workers often leave the state for less expensive regions.

Solving this affordable housing crisis will require us to use every tool in the toolbox. That requires zoning reform that encourages the creation of walkable, sustainable, and inclusive communities. It requires public investment. And it requires strengthening tenant protections that ensure that communities can remain affordable, inclusive, and stable.

However, municipalities across Massachusetts are blocked from taking the necessary steps to address the housing crisis. The misguided statewide ban on rent stabilization policies and a stringent home rule system that prevents municipalities from passing their own laws to govern the basic aspects of civil affairs hamstring municipalities.

By enabling our cities and towns to pass rent control ordinances tailored to their local needs, we can stem the displacement that is hitting so many communities.

We cannot build our way out of the crisis alone because the people at the highest risk for displacement will already be pushed out before they can benefit from any medium to long-term reduction in rents.

There is a lot of fear-mongering around rent control, but I want to make a simple point. If you don’t think a landlord should be able to double or triple someone’s rent in a year after doing no work on the property, you believe in rent control, and the question is just a matter of percentages and exemptions.

On too many issues, Massachusetts is haunted by the ghosts of ill-advised ballot initiatives past. It’s 2023, and we need to act like it.

Empowering cities and towns to respond to our housing crisis also requires passing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). The TOPA bill, which is similarly an enabling bill, recognizes that we need to preserve our affordable housing stock. Too often, when large landlords sell a building, a mass eviction or rent hike follows for the tenants. TOPA shows that there is another way: as has been a proven success in DC for decades, we could enable tenants to come together to purchase the building—and be granted the right of first refusal in doing so. It’s a common-sense policy for community stability and affordable housing at no cost to the state.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts 

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/affordability

[2] https://nlihc.org/oor/state/ma

PM Joins Coalition of 100+ Groups Calling on Legislature to Fund Emergency Assistance Family Shelter

Progressive Mass signed onto the following letter organized by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. You can see the full list of signers here.

October 30, 2023

The Honorable Senate President Karen Spilka
Office of the Senate President  
State House, Room 332
Boston, MA 02133

The Honorable Speaker Ronald Mariano
Office of the Speaker of the House
State House, Room 356
Boston, MA 02133

Re: Please Fund Emergency Assistance Family Shelter; Don’t Leave Kids Out in the Cold

Dear Senate President Spilka, Speaker Mariano, and members of the Legislature:

Thank you for your longstanding strong support of children and families in the Commonwealth. We are grateful for your commitment to meeting residents’ basic needs, and especially the needs of the most vulnerable members of our communities.

We write to ask you to urgently provide enough supplemental funding for the Emergency Assistance (EA) family shelter program to enable it to continue to serve all eligible families who are experiencing homelessness at least through January. This would give state leaders time to carefully consider policy solutions to the surge in demand for family shelter. It would also be consistent with the 90-days advance notice that the line item, 7004-0101, requires before eligibility changes are made. Such notice has not yet been provided by the Administration to the Legislature.  

There is no greater basic need than shelter from the elements, which is why we are so proud to live in a state that guarantees a right to shelter to eligible children in need. We are keenly aware that the EA system is under great strain at the moment, and you and the Administration are working to develop solutions. In the meantime, however, we are deeply, deeply troubled by the notion that the state may shut shelter doors to new applicants and place eligible families on a waiting list starting this week, on November 1st.

We have seen what happens when families cannot access shelter. Toddlers huddle with their parents on the street. Children are forced to sleep in cars in the bitter cold. Parents and guardians attempt to protect themselves and their small loved ones from inclement weather and physical danger in places not meant for human habitation.  

Please appropriate the necessary funds to sustain our shelter system through January, at a minimum, as an interim measure while working to develop a more comprehensive, family-focused response that could be enacted when the Legislature returns from its winter recess.

Sincerely,

What’s in the Governor’s Bond Bill? And What’s Next?

On October 18, the Healey Administration released their proposed housing bond bill, named the Affordable Homes Act. 

The bill includes $4 billion in capital spending authorizations, 28 policy changes or initiatives, three executive orders and two targeted tax credits focused on addressing the state’s worsening affordable housing crisis.

The $4 billion in capital spending authorizations includes $1.6 billion for public housing ($150 million of which would go toward decarbonization efforts). You can read an overview of the spending authorizations here, but below we want to focus on a few of the policy proposals that align with legislation we have been supporting. 

But first: what is a bond bill? A bond bill is legislation that authorizes the state to issue and sell bonds to fund capital projects and programs. The bond bill contains capital authorizations, which identify programs that can be funded through revenue raised through said bonds. Importantly, a bond bill only authorizes the spending; continued advocacy is necessary for the spending to become a reality afterwards. 

But back to the policy overview…

GOOD 

Creation of a five-year housing plan

The bill would require the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities to prepare a statewide housing plan every 5 years, conducting regional outreach following robust data analysis. Having more intentionality around our housing needs is certainly important. 

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) As-Of-Right

Many cities and towns across the state have been fighting to pass zoning reforms to allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) — small, independent residences built on the same lot as a single-family home — as a way to increase affordable housing stock. The bill would permit ADUs of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities–in other words, eliminating the need for special zoning ordinances by the city or town to permit them. 

The bill would prohibit owner occupancy requirements, which have worked against efforts to desegregate communities. Affordable rental stock is key to having a racially and economically diverse community. 

The bill also prohibits parking mandates to ADUs within ½ mile of transit, making them more affordable to build as parking spaces cost money and thus make housing less affordable. 

Inclusionary Zoning by Simple Majority

When Massachusetts recently updated the state’s zoning laws to allow cities and towns to approve certain new zoning ordinances by simple majority, this suite of reforms notably did not include inclusionary zoning ordinances, which would require developers to build a certain percentage of affordable units as a part of new construction. 

This bill would correct that omission and add inclusionary zoning ordinances and bylaws to the list of zoning changes municipalities can pass by a simple majority in the relevant legislative body (e.g., city council, town meeting).

Surplus Public Land Disposition Reforms

We need to build more housing and more affordable housing, and that requires land to build it on. The bill would help streamline the disposition of land under the control of a state agency or quasi for housing purposes. When the state owns the land, it can also lower the costs of building housing, making it easier to build affordable units. 

Establishing the Office of Fair Housing

The bill establishes an office within the  Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities with explicit focus on fair housing and establishes a trust fund for enforcement initiatives, fair housing testing, education, and outreach. Strong fair housing laws and enforcement ensure that people are not discriminated against in buying or renting a home for reasons of race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, etc. 

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

Local Option Transfer Fee

Cities and towns across the state facing a dire lack of affordable housing have turned toward transfer fees as an option: by imposing a modest fee on high-end real estate transactions, cities and towns can raise money for their affordable housing trusts. Seventeen cities and towns have home rule petitions to do this before the State House, a sign of both the breadth of support as well as the limitations municipalities face in addressing the crisis on their own. 

The bill would allow municipalities and regional affordable housing commissions to adopt a transfer fee of 0.5% – 2.0%, paid by the seller, on the portion of sale proceeds over $1M or the county median home sales price, whichever is greater, with the revenue used for affordable housing development.

This proposal is great for Boston, whose transfer fee HRP would apply to property sales over $2 million (on their value over $2 million), but it would limit some of the other HRPs. 

For instance, Amherst is interested in a transfer fee, but the median home sale price in Hampshire County is only $427,500. Pushing the threshold up to $1 million would severely limit how much they could raise. 

And on Martha’s Vineyard, where all of the towns have been actively lobbying for their Home Rule Petitions given a dire housing crisis, this would push up their threshold to over $1.3 million, again limiting how much they could raise. 

Eviction Sealing

Having an eviction record is creating a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing. Records are created as soon as a case is filed and are publicly available forever–– regardless of the outcome. These records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color. Regardless of whether one does anything wrong or is actually evicted, being party to an eviction or housing case is being unfairly held against tenants when they try to rent a new place.

There’s a clear solution to this problem: sealing eviction records, either immediately in cases of no-fault or for a defined period of time for other cases. 

The bill would provide a process for tenants to petition the court to seal an eviction record for (i) no-fault evictions: after conclusion of the case; (ii) solely non-payment evictions: no other eviction action within past 3 years and judgment for underlying eviction has been satisfied; and (iii) all other fault evictions: 7 years from conclusion of the matter and 3 years without any other eviction case filed against the tenant. It would also prohibit consumer reporting agencies from disclosing information in a sealed eviction record.

Although this is a step forward, we should not burden tenants with unnecessary bureaucratic steps to seal eviction records. Rather than enabling them to petition a court, the court should automatically seal records at the given benchmarks, as was the case in a prior iteration of the HOMES Act. 

What’s Next?

The bill will have a hearing with the Joint Housing Committee and possibly other committees, and given the history of past bond bills, it may not be finalized until the end of the session. But what that means is that your state legislators need to be hearing from you.

The HERO Bill Can Help Us Tackle Both the Housing Crisis and the Climate Crisis

Testimony in support of H.2894 & S.1799 An Act providing for climate change adaptation infrastructure and affordable housing investments in the Commonwealth from Caroline Bays of Progressive Watertown

Chair Moran, Chair Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue:

Thank you for hearing my testimony.

My name is Caroline Bays and I have been a city councilor in Watertown for 6 years. Over the last few years several things have become clear – we have several existential issues facing us and we cannot address them without your help. 

Watertown, like most of eastern Massachusetts, is experiencing a housing crisis that is not going away. It is only getting worse. In just the six years I have been a councilor I have witnessed the city transform from a mixed class city with a wide variety of residents to a relatively rich extension of Cambridge. Our housing crisis extends to both the big A and little a affordable and we are going to have to come up with more innovative ways – and more money – to address the increasingly drastic issues of displacement we are experiencing.

But we have two existential crises facing us. Our city is very concerned about climate change and Watertown has passed a very aggressive climate action plan in our attempt to do our part to address the climate crisis, but in order to get to where we need to be by 2050 we will need money to implement our plan. We have hundreds of action items on our to-do list, and it ranges from comparatively small financial commitments, such as adding more street trees and EV chargers to incredibly expensive commitments such as retrofitting all of our municipal buildings to make them greener and creating a green municipal fleet. We need money for all of it. And it will mean multi-millions of dollars in investment. 

The HERO Bill is one low impact mechanism to help generate the money we need to meet our commitments. It is a comparatively small fee but it will generate money that can have a large impact on cities and towns, by helping us to meet our housing and climate goals. 

I will be delighted if you pass the enabling act for the transfer fee and I support that bill wholeheartedly, but that will not be enough. We are facing the humanitarian crisis of homelessness and the existential crisis of climate change. Now is the time for action and all of us in Watertown are doing our best to meet these crises, but we need your help. On behalf of my city and others across the Commonwealth, I am asking for your support. I urge you to report H.2894 & S.1799 out favorably so the state can raise the funds which will help our towns and cities do our part to implement the solutions we all know we need.

Thank you for hearing my testimony.

Testimony: Tackling Affordability Requires Investment

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Chair Moran, Chair Cusack, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We have heard a lot from the Legislature recently about wanting to take action on affordability, as the cost of living in Massachusetts has become increasingly unsustainable for many. However, contrary to recent steps, we cannot tax-cut our way into affordability. We need to invest. And that, of course, requires money.

We urge you to give a favorable report to the following bills:

  • S.1771 / H.2747: An Act granting a local option for a real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing, filed by Sen. Jo Comerford and Rep. Mike Connolly.
  • S.1799 / H.2894: An Act providing for climate change adaptation infrastructure and affordable housing investments in the Commonwealth, filed by Sen. Jamie Eldridge and Rep. Sam Montaño
  • S.1834 / H.2824: An Act to support educational opportunity for all, filed by Sen. Adam Gomez, Rep. Natalie Higgins, and Rep. Christine Barber

Transfer Fee (S.1771/H.2747)

Our cities and towns need every tool in the toolbox to address our state’s housing crisis, and this bill would provide a crucial one. By imposing a small fee on high-end real estate transactions, communities will be able to provide much-needed funding to affordable housing trusts so that we can preserve and expand affordable housing stock. These bills recognize that each community’s housing situation is different and thus enable cities and towns to craft the proposal that best fits their community’s needs.

Cities and towns from across the Commonwealth have already filed home rule petitions to do this. When our cities and towns want to become places where people can afford to live at every stage of life, the State Legislature should support them, not be a roadblock. 

HERO bill (S.1799/H.2894)

This bill offers another tool for responding to our affordable housing crisis and, moreover, recognizes the need for not just affordable housing but green and healthy communities as well.

Initiated by the Housing and Environment Revenue Opportunities (HERO) Coalition, it would raise the deeds excise fee to a value still lower than comparable fees in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont to raise dedicated revenue for climate resilience and affordable housing.

The estimated $300 million from this bill could go toward steps like creating or preserving additional housing for 18,000 working-class homeowners and renters over 10 years; financing hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive, flexible grants to localities for climate resilience and mitigation; or assisting between 3,500 and 6,500 additional extremely low-income families per year with housing vouchers or project-based rental assistance.

Educational Opportunity for All (S.1834/H.2824)

Massachusetts is lucky to be home to many world-class universities. But these large institutions, despite often operating indistinguishably from for-profit institutions, do not have to pay taxes. Given their large footprint, that is a fiscal drain for many communities across the Commonwealth, especially given the fact that such private universities will only ever educate a small percentage of the Commonwealth’s residents.

The endowment of Harvard University stood at over $50 billion last year; MIT, over $20 billion.

These bills recognize that such affluent institutions have the ability to contribute more. They would put a small excise fee on the part of a university’s endowment over $1 billion to create dedicated revenue for a fund subsidizing the cost of higher education, early education, and child care for lower-income and middle-class residents of the commonwealth.

Governor Healey and House and Senate leaders have all spoken about wanting to take action on the exorbitant cost of child care, early education, and higher education, and this bill offers a sensible and dependable way of raising the funds to do so.

Thank you for all your work on today’s hearing, and again, we urge you to swiftly advance these bills.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Massachusetts Needs a Right to Counsel

Green affordable housing

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We see it all the time in polls, we hear it on the doors, and we see it in the data: Massachusetts has a housing crisis. More and more residents are unable to afford to live in our commonwealth anymore, priced out from one community to another and then out entirely, or face severe housing instability. 

We need a comprehensive approach to the housing crisis, and strong protections for tenants must be a part of it. We urge you to give a favorable report to S.864/H.1731: An Act promoting access to counsel and housing stability in Massachusetts.

These bills would provide legal representation for low-income tenants and low-income owner-occupants in eviction proceedings. The eviction moratorium that the Legislature passed earlier in the pandemic was a vital lifeline for so many, but eviction filings have now been climbing past what they were in 2019, pre-pandemic. Tenants enter such eviction proceedings at a major disadvantage: according to FY2022 Trial Court data, while 86% of landlords are represented, only 11.5% of tenants are represented. Tenants facing eviction are disproportionately poor, female, and BIPOC, and evictions can have lasting negative impacts on physical and mental health.

Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington have already passed Right to Counsel policies, and Massachusetts should join them. 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts 

A “Yes in My Backyard” Call from Newton

Dense neighborhood

From Bill Humphrey, Progressive Newton

Thank you to Chairman Arciero, Chairwoman Edwards, and other esteemed members of the Committee for hosting a hearing and collecting written testimony. I am submitting testimony on behalf of Progressive Newton (which I chair) and in my individual capacity as a Newton City Councilor in support of The Yes in My Backyard Bill (HB1379/SB858). Progressive Newton supports affordable, high-quality housing in safe, walkable, and vibrant neighborhoods and supports affirmatively furthering fair housing to ensure everyone has equal access to housing.

Specifically I wish to offer insights into two provisions of this legislation that have already essentially been adopted in Newton. The first concerns Accessory Dwelling Units and the second concerns Inclusionary Zoning.

The City of Newton in 2022 adopted local zoning changes to make it much easier to build Accessory Dwelling Units, and this new system is similar to that proposed statewide by The Yes in My Backyard Bill (HB1379/SB858). These smaller, separated units of housing on existing lots, usually primarily occupied by a Single-Family Home, not only add to our overall housing stock without much wider impact, but they also specifically help families find proximate housing for elder relatives and adult children (including those with disabilities) or help “big house” elder owner-occupants find a bit of extra rental income to be able to stay in their homes longer or to be able to afford historic preservation (especially if the unit is a traditional carriage house). These ADUs have not always been easy to build or set up under local rules, and this has discouraged them from being created. This legislation will help correct this on a consistent basis across the Commonwealth. It will allow more multi-generational families to live together, enable new incomes for owner-occupants of older homes, and facilitate additional units of new housing across Massachusetts with a smaller effect on existing neighborhoods than some larger development projects that sometimes generate more controversy.

The City of Newton has also already adopted ambitious but fair and rational Inclusionary Zoning targets, which promote the creation of more affordable units than ever before in market-rate projects but without economically discouraging overall production of housing in a substantial way. The Yes in My Backyard Bill (HB1379/SB858) establishes a reasonable compromise at a state level, by proposing that “The Department of Housing and Community Development shall be responsible for developing guidelines to ensure that municipalities do not adopt inclusionary zoning ordinances or bylaws that [unduly] constrain the production of housing in that community.”

Many other provisions in the legislation are also things presently being explored as potential local changes in Newton, but these two points are steps Newton has already taken, and they have been widely supported.

City Councilor Bill Humphrey

Newton MA 02468

We Need More Housing, and We Need More Affordable Housing.

Dense neighborhood

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.1379/S.858: An Act relative to yes in my backyard and S.870: An Act to improve the housing development incentive program.

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $41.64 per hour. [1] Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as median housing sale price in Metro Boston nears $1 million. [2] We need action, and we need to be using every tool in the toolbox to make our state more affordable for all.

If we want to see more homes, and more affordable homes, being built, then we need to reform our zoning laws. According to a recent analysis by the Eviction Lab, Massachusetts metro areas accounted for 3 of the top 10 metro areas with the most restrictive zoning laws. Such restrictive zoning laws push up costs and reinforce residential segregation: indeed, according to census data, more than 60 percent of Massachusetts’s Black population lives in just ten cities. 

The MBTA Communities law, recently passed and currently being implemented by cities and towns, can make a dent, but we need more ambitious and comprehensive policy. H.1379/S.858 would require multifamily zoning and remove costly parking mandates around public transportation, encouraging dense, transit-oriented development that is good for climate and good for communities. It would also expedite the process of converting unused state-owned land into affordable housing or vacant commercial properties into multifamily housing, among many other steps. 

We also need to make sure that we are building more affordable housing, and S.870 would reform the Housing Development Incentive Program to ensure that it actually does so. Currently, the HDIP program subsidizes units with shockingly high rents in hot markets in little need of the “carrot” of tax incentives. [3] The program needs to be refocused to where it can have clear benefits for surrounding communities and to design mixed-income housing that addresses the full range of housing needs in our gateway cities.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

[1] National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Massachusetts.” Accessed July 25, 2023. https://nlihc.org/oor/state/ma.

[2] Kohli, Diti. “The Typical House in Greater Boston Now Costs $900,000. Here’s What That’ll Buy You in the Rest of America.” Boston Globe. July 20, 2022.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/20/business/typical-house-greater-boston-now-costs-900000-heres-what-thatll-buy-you-rest-america/.

[3] https://www.masslegalservices.org/content/MLRI_HDIP_Report_12_15_22.

Build Housing, Not Pipelines

Next week, the MA Legislature will be holding hearings on key bills to put a moratorium on new gas infrastructure and encourage walkable, transit-oriented communities. Both are essential to combating climate change and creating a green, healthy, and affordable state for all.

Put Gas in the Past

This summer has been an ongoing series of warning signs of the need to take bold and comprehensive action on climate change. Earlier this month, from July 3 to July 6, we experienced the four hottest days on record globally. We have seen extreme flooding hit neighboring states as well as our own, and the same for the dystopian impacts of raging wildfires in Canada.

This should serve as a wake-up call that our response to climate change, despite recent progress, is not enough. We have known for many years now that the majority of fossil fuels must be left in the ground if we are to have even a chance of staying within safe boundaries of global warming.

Next Wednesday and Thursday, the Legislature will be hearing bills to put gas in the past by establishing a moratorium on new gas system expansion. This will help us meet our state’s climate goals, protect human and environmental health, and provide time for us to create a plan for a just transition.

Sign up to testify (in person or virtually) at the Senate hearing on Wednesday, 7/26, at 1pm.

Sign up to testify (in person or virtually) at the House hearing on Thursday, 7/27, at 10am.

Want to submit written testimony? Check out the Put Gas in the Past toolkit here, or use this template.

Put Gas in the Past

Tackling Our Housing Crisis

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. We can tout our great quality of life on index after index, but if people can’t afford to live here, it doesn’t mean much.

To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $37.97 per hour. Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price has passed $600,000.

The unaffordability of housing in Massachusetts isn’t inevitable. It’s a result of a long legacy of exclusionary zoning that has disproportionately harmed working-class and BIPOC residents.

The Yes in My Backyard Bill (H.1379) would require multifamily zoning and remove costly parking mandates around public transportation, encouraging dense, transit-oriented development that is good for climate and good for communities. It would also expedite the process of converting unused state-owned land into affordable housing or vacant commercial properties into multifamily housing, among many other steps.

Sign up to testify (in person or virtually) at the hearing on Wednesday, 7/26, at 2 pm.

Want to submit written testimony? Check out the Abundant Housing toolkit here, or use this template.

Evictions Are Rapidly Rising. The Legislature Needs to Act.

eviction notice

Monday, June 26, 2023

Chair Edwards, Chair Arciero, and Members of the Joint Committee on Housing:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to S.856 and H.1312: The Upstream RAFT Act, sponsored by Sen. Brendan Crighton and Rep. Marjorie Decker. This bill would improve access to the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition program (RAFT), restore COVID-era protections, and codify the RAFT program into state statute.

We often hear rhetoric about the housing crisis in Massachusetts. According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, it would take more than 90 hours working at minimum wage to afford a modest 1-bedroom rental home in Massachusetts at Fair Market Rent. With the cost of housing so high, housing insecurity abounds. According to data from the Eviction Lab, the number of evictions in Boston jumped significantly over the past year and is now higher than pre-COVID levels, disproportionately affecting Black and Brown families.

Addressing our housing crisis requires a vast array of policy reforms, but at the most basic level, we must take swift action in the near term to curb the growth of displacement. The RAFT program is a lifeline for low-income families, providing emergency, short-term financial assistance for low-income tenants who are at risk of eviction—regardless of immigration status. During the pandemic, this emergency assistance saved many families from homelessness.

But the program has also failed to reach its full potential because of barriers to access, and the Upstream RAFT bill seeks to address them. This bill eliminates the requirement of a “notice to quit” so that tenants can access assistance before a housing emergency becomes an eviction. Many tenants mistake a “notice to quit” for an eviction, losing out not only on their home but also on the supports the state can provide them.

It eliminates the arbitrary $10,000 annual cap on assistance and adopts a 12-month limit instead: tenants are not the ones to blame for rising rents, and they should not be punished for it.

It further reduces obstacles by providing workarounds to enable tenants with uncooperative landlords to receive assistance. No tenant should have to depend on their landlord to receive essential assistance for housing security.

And lastly, the bill would codify the RAFT program into statute in order to add long-term stability to a vital program.

We urge you to act swiftly and advance S.856 and H.312 to improve housing stability in the Commonwealth.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts