Boston Mayor Michelle Wu made one other push for lease management Tuesday, telling state lawmakers that she views the controversial stabilization reform as one piece of a broader technique to deal with the housing disaster.
Wu submitted written testimony forward of a Joint Committee on Housing session on the State House, the place the mayor’s dwelling rule petition for lease stabilization was amongst numerous related proposals that had been thought-about.
Approved by the City Council final March and filed by state Rep. Samantha Montano, the invoice would cap Boston’s year-over-year lease will increase at 6% plus shopper value indexes, to a max of 10%.
“Much like the rest of the Commonwealth, the city of Boston is in a severe housing crisis,” Wu wrote. “This would allow tenants to have reasonable expectations of the increases in their living expenses and allow them to plan accordingly.”
According to statistics supplied by the mayor, nearly all of residents and households within the metropolis are renters, and greater than 50% are cost-burdened, which means that they spend 30% or extra of their revenue on housing.
Owner-occupied properties with six or fewer models, in addition to all new building for the primary 15 years after they obtain their certificates of occupancy, can be exempt from the potential lease management coverage, Wu stated.
Given these exemptions, the mayor estimates that 55% of the town’s rental properties can be topic to lease stabilization.
The invoice additionally contains new tenant protections, together with simply trigger requirement for evictions and the cost of relocation charges for tenants evicted for a “no-fault” simply trigger, Wu wrote.
“This home-rule petition takes a balanced approach to immediately protect renters against the most egregious, excessive rent increases that push families out, while also continuing to empower housing production to create new homes across the city,” Wu stated.
The metropolis’s lease management proposal, whereas in style amongst advocates, has drawn robust opposition from trade teams just like the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, which stated Tuesday that the measure would inhibit housing manufacturing, discourage the maintenance and upkeep of flats, and drive down property tax income.
Rent stabilization is seen by the Wu administration as only one piece of a “much broader strategy to address the housing crisis,” the mayor stated, including that she is targeted on growing the variety of inexpensive properties within the metropolis by means of each attainable mechanism.
On Wednesday, for instance, she plans to make an announcement round multi-family housing, which violates the town’s present antiquated zoning code in “most of our neighborhoods,” Wu stated on GBH’s Boston Public Radio.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”