No Rent Regulation Hearing Till Fall 2023 Despite Boston's Rent Hikes?

Between July 2022 and July 2023, the median monthly rent charged market-rate tenants for an apartment in Massachusetts increased by $306 per month, to $2,877 per month; making the median monthly rent charged tenants for an apartment in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 92 percent higher than the U.S. national median average monthly rent of $1,501, according to the Zillow.com website.

And in Boston between July 2022 and July 2023, the median monthly rent charged market-rate tenants for an apartment increased by $693 per month, to $3,200 per month; making the median monthly rent charged tenants for an apartment in the “New Boston” 113 percent higher than the U.S. national median average monthly rent.

In addition, between 2021 and 2023, the official number of homeless families in Boston increased from 843 to 1,131 on the night of Jan. 30, 2023, according to the City of Boston’s annual homeless census; and between Feb. 23, 2022 and Jan. 30, 2023, the official number of unsheltered homeless individuals still having to sleep on Boston’s streets at night increased by 42 percent, from 119 individuals to 169 individuals.

Although over 24,000 new residential units were constructed by Boston’s real estate developers between 2014 and 2019, between February 2022 and February 2023 the number of individuals still having to spend their nights in emergency shelters--rather than being housed in individual studio or 1-bedroom apartments (as most individuals at risk of being homeless in Boston were housed, prior to 1980)—increased by 19.8 percent, from 1,121 individuals in 2022 to 1,342 individuals in 2023.

And between 2022 and 2023, the total number of homeless individuals not living with other family members on the night of the City of Boston’s annual census increased from 1,595 to 1,803; while the total number of homeless persons in Boston living with other family members—homeless children and adults in all family emergency shelters and transitional housing—increased by 17.5 percent, from 2,894 in 2022 to 3,399 in 2023.

In addition, nearly 5,000 eviction notices--for failing to pay excessively high, inflated rents to their landlords--were delivered to tenants in Boston during the first two months of 2023; while, between February 23, 2022 and January 30, 2023, the total number of all homeless people in Boston increased by 17.2 percent, from 4,439 people to 5,202 people.

Yet, according to a June 22, 2023 Boston Herald newspaper article by Chris Van Buskirk, “a staff member for Massachusetts State Senator Lydia Edwards, a co-chair of the” Massachusetts legislative body’s ” Housing Committee, “said the committee is” only “looking at holding a public hearing on” a “bill authorizing rent control in Boston” in “October or early November” 2023—despite the intensified affordable housing crisis that market-rate working-class tenants of all racial backgrounds in Boston and other Massachusetts cities and towns have been experiencing since 2021.

In a July 11, 2023 email to State Senator Edwards’s Chief of Staff, Eduardo Moreno Mendez, this writer asked if it were true that the “Joint Committee on Housing won’t be holding a public hearing until October or November 2023 on a bill authorizing rent control or rent stabilization in Boston’ and if true, “why isn’t a public hearing” on this proposed bill “being held in July 2023”?

And State Senator Edwards was also asked in this same July 11, 2023 email if the progressive Massachusetts legislator thought it was “ethically and politically appropriate for the campaign committees of politically progressive members of the Joint Committee on Housing to accept individual campaign contributions of $1,000 from executives of real estate development and real estate industry firms (like Millennium Partners, The Davis Companies, Redgate, Cargo Ventures, The Fallon Companies, etc.)”?

But despite State Senator Edwards’s Chief of Staff replying in a July 11, 2023 email to this writer that “I have received your email and will get back to you in 24 hours,” as of the afternoon of July 14, 2023 no email response to the above two questions were received by this writer.