Rent Control Foe's Firm Gives $6,000 To Boston Mayor's Campaign

According to an April 2021 WBUR website article, over 70 percent of Boston's residents now want to see rent control and rent regulation protection for Boston's tenants restored in 2021.

Yet since replacing Marty Walsh as the mayor of Boston in April 2021, Boston Mayor Kim Janey has apparently not been that eager to push very much for the Democratic Party-controlled legislature in Massachusetts to respond to Boston's low and middle-income rental housing emergency; by enacting legislation that would authorize the City of Boston to immediately re-establish a permanent system of rent control, rent regulation and rent rollback in Boston in 2021.

Coincidentally, according to Janey Committee financial disclosure forms, on June 30, 2021 the Boston Mayor's campaign committee accepted $6,000 in campaign contributions from donors affiliated with Chestnut Hill Realty--whose CEO, former Rental Housing Association [RHA] President and former Greater Boston Real Estate Board Vice-President Ed Zuker, historically helped eliminate rent regulation in Boston during the early 1990's.

As long-time Boston tenant organizer Steve Meacham recalled in a 2003 Dollars and Sense Magazine article:

"Until 1994, Boston and...Brookline and Cambridge restricted rent increases...The real estate industry...overcame...local popular support by...a statewide ballot initiative that asked all state voters to eliminate rent regulation in those three cities...The real estate lobby outspent affordable housing advocates by at least a 7 to 1 margin...

"The so-called Small Property Owners Association [SPOA]...has long provided the troops, and the Rental Housing Association [RHA] the financing, for attacks on rent regulation, beginning with the referendum campaign in 1994...The RHA has taken the approach of admitting that a housing crisis exists but arguing that the solution is to allow them to build more luxury housing in Boston's neighborhoods...The RHA...oppose any regulation of rents..."

Besides accepting a $1,000 campaign contribution from former RHA President, former Greater Boston Real Estate Board Vice-President and Chestnut Hill Realty CEO Ed Zuker on June 30, 2021, Boston Mayor Janey's campaign committee also accepted the following other campaign contributions from individuals affiliated with former RHA VP Zuker's Chestnut Hill Realty firm on June 30, 2021:

1. A campaign contribution of $1,000 from Robert Zuker of Chestnut Hill Realty;

2. A campaign contribution of $1,000 from Lauren Siff of Chestnut Hill Realty;

3. A campaign contribution of $1,000 from Christopher Rodgers III of Chestnut Hill Realty;

4. A campaign contribution of $1,000 from Danyel Rodgers of Chestnut Hill Realty; and

5. A campaign contribution of $1,000 from Catherine Morat of Chestnut Hill Realty.

In addition, although "non-profit" institutions in Boston (that still aren't required to pay a fair share of local and city taxes in Boston) like Emerson College, WGBH, the Barr Foundation and The Boston Foundation are not supposed to be supporting the campaigns of candidates for political office, on June 10, 2021 the CEO/President of The Boston Foundation, former Emerson College President Lee Pelton, also gave a campaign contribution of $1,000 to Boston Mayor Janey's campaign committee.

Coincidentally, besides now being the CEO/President of the "non-profit" Boston Foundation (whose total assets currently exceed $1.6 billion), former Emerson College President Pelton also currently sits on the board of the Barr Foundation, WGBH and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. And, according to Emerson College's Form 990 financial filing for 2019, between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 Boston Foundation CEO/President and Janey campaign committee contributor Pelton was paid a total annual annual compensation of $969,742 by "non-profit" Emerson College.