Gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey brought on a stir Friday when she appeared to voice opposition to Mayor Michelle Wu’s efforts to implement a lease management coverage within the metropolis — after which walked again her remarks.
Attorney General Healey, a Democrat, was requested on a GBH radio program whether or not, if elected governor, she would signal a rent-control invoice ought to it make it to her desk.
“I don’t think that’s the solution,” stated Healey, who later added: “I’m a big believer in making sure that those needing rental assistance have support but I think the way you get there — the overall picture — it’s not through rent stabilization. It’s through the production of more housing.”
The query was posed after the interviewer instructed Healey that Boston’s mayor helps some variation of what Wu calls lease stabilization, generally known as lease management.
Since lease management was outlawed within the Nineteen Nineties in Massachusetts in a statewide poll referendum, implementing some type of the trouble in Boston would require state approval, which Wu has stated she plans to hunt subsequent yr.
Shortly after the interview aired, Healey’s marketing campaign staff started to stroll again her remarks.
Campaign spokesperson Maria Hardiman instructed the Herald, “we’ve been clarifying what she said a little bit.” The query was about lease management, she stated, “so the interpretation there was that it was about a statewide” lease management coverage.
“Maura supports the right of communities to implement their own policies on rent stabilization,” Hardiman stated. “She does not believe that a blanket statewide policy requiring rent control is the solution to our housing affordability crisis.”
Healey instructed GBH she want to see extra reasonably priced housing throughout all earnings ranges in Massachusetts, together with relaxed zoning restrictions and a concentrate on transit-oriented improvement.
When a response was requested from Wu’s camp on Healey’s rent-control feedback, the mayor’s workplace as a substitute directed the Herald to look at a March 10 press convention, the place Wu introduced the formation of a Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee.
“The mayor has assembled a Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee to study rent control models in other cities and Boston’s housing market,” stated Wu press secretary Ricardo Patron. “Following their study they will make a policy recommendation.”
In March, Wu stated lease management can imply many various issues, from setting particular rents, to capping the quantity individuals pay, or placing parameters round how a lot lease can go up.
While the mayor declined remark, Healey’s Democratic opponent for governor, state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, took the chance to share her help for lease management on her Twitter account.
“Local option rent stabilization is an important tool at our disposal here,” stated Chang-Diaz. “We need to come into the 21st century and allow cities and towns this flexibility. When I’m governor, I will sign a bill to allow it.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”