Hire management
The latest push for a 2026 lease management poll query,(“Hire Management Push”, Aug 6) is the newest chapter in a well-known story of well-meaning insurance policies that promise reduction however assure decline. As soon as once more, we see a proposal that treats the symptom — excessive lease — whereas aggressively ignoring the illness: a power, self-inflicted housing scarcity.
It’s an financial axiom: worth controls don’t work. Capping annual lease will increase on the Client Value Index (or some arbitrary proportion) is an try and defy financial gravity. It pretends {that a} landlord’s prices for mortgages, property taxes, insurance coverage, and upkeep merely vanish when their income is capped. They don’t. The inevitable outcome, confirmed again and again, is the deterioration of the present housing inventory and a screeching halt to new funding.
The info on this isn’t theoretical. Take a look at our personal historical past. After Cambridge abolished lease management in 1994, a examine by the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis discovered that previously managed properties noticed their values bounce, resulting in elevated funding and property tax revenues. Extra lately, a landmark 2019 Stanford examine on San Francisco’s lease management discovered that whereas it benefited some incumbent tenants, it additionally diminished the availability of obtainable rental housing by 15% and drove up market-rate rents throughout the town by over 5%.
Much more starkly, after St. Paul, Minnesota applied a strict lease management coverage in 2021, permits for brand new multi-family housing development plummeted by over 80% within the following months as builders fled the market.
Proponents body this as a software to stop displacement and shield working households. However the proof reveals lease management is a merciless lottery. It advantages a handful of fortunate incumbents on the direct expense of everybody else. It makes it tougher for younger individuals, new residents, and rising households to discover a house, as the availability of obtainable items shrinks. By locking present tenants in place, it creates a stagnant, insider-outsider system that in the end entrenches the very inequity it claims to resolve. It doesn’t make housing extra inexpensive; it simply makes it extra scarce.
The advocates are proper about one factor: housing prices are crushing. However the answer isn’t to argue over tips on how to slice a shrinking pie. The answer is to bake a a lot greater one. Legalize multi-family housing statewide. Implement and increase the MBTA Communities Act to preclude the paper compliance seen in lots of cities, and spend money on commuter rail availability and reliability whereas fast-tracking allowing for every type of housing.
Till our “leaders” have the braveness to dismantle the regulatory fortress that created this disaster, proposals like lease management are nothing greater than a dangerous distraction.
Gary Durst
North Billerica
