Boston Mayor Wu says she would support rent control ballot question

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said this week that if a proposed ballot question implementing rent control statewide made it to a vote this fall, she would vote in support.

“It’s not perfect,” she said of the ballot question during an interview on GBH’s Boston Public Radio on Tuesday. “But I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in this case when there is so much urgency and pressure from housing costs on our residents.”

As written, the ballot question would limit annual rent hikes statewide to the cost of living increase measured by the Consumer Price Index, with a maximum cap of 5%. It includes exemptions for owner-occupied buildings with less than five units and for the first 10 years that a newly constructed building is open.

Rent control was banned in Massachusetts in 1994 by a ballot question. Renters, advocates and legislators have repeatedly tried to reinstate it without success.

A previous effort to get rent stabilization on the 2024 ballot was abandoned after its proponents failed to get enough signatures to qualify.

The proposal is one of 12 initiative petitions currently in the running for the 2026 ballot, 11 of which are currently before the state Legislature. Legislators can choose to enact any of the proposed laws, or compromise versions of them, rather than letting voters decide in November. The deadline for the Legislature to do so is May 5.

For any that are not acted on by Beacon Hill lawmakers, supporters will need to gather and file 12,429 additional signatures from registered voters by July to officially make it onto the ballot.

Wu has been a strong supporter of rent control in the past, campaigning on the promise of bringing it back when she first ran for mayor in 2021. In her first term, she filed a home rule petition to implement rent control in Boston, which passed the City Council but failed to get the necessary approval from the Legislature.

Wu said in 2023 that she did not support the rent control question proposed for the next year’s ballot, saying she didn’t feel the initiative petition was the right process to use. However, she said this week that the city had tried on multiple occasions to create policies that would reduce the burden of housing costs on residents, only to be blocked by the Legislature.

She said she did not like that the language of the ballot question would put the same regulations in place everywhere, instead of allowing each city and town to decide what would work best for its community.

“Something’s got to give,” she said. “There’s always a better solution that comes out of legislating and being able to pass something with nuance than the kind of hammer of a ballot initiative. But we need to see something happen.”