Tenant advocates urge rent protections, tenant purchase tools as investor buying and rent hikes accelerate

Tenant advocates and legal services groups told the Joint Committee on Housing that corporate investors and steep market rent increases are driving displacement across Massachusetts and pressed for policy tools to preserve housing for low‑ and moderate‑income residents.

Carolyn Chu, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts, described repeated examples where new owners raised rents sharply or served eviction notices after an ownership change and said the pattern is widespread. “You shouldn’t be able to buy a building and then just run people over like you’re driving a tractor, not worrying about who is getting crushed under the wheels,” she said in testimony including examples from Lynn and East Hampton.

Advocates said the state needs both short‑term protections to keep people housed now and long‑term preservation. They recommended policies including local‑option rent stabilization, tenant opportunity to purchase mechanisms (TOPA), foreclosure mediation, stronger limits on junk fees and brokers’ fees, and increased funding for RAFT, HomeBASE and voucher programs. They also urged funding and statutory alignment to let community land trusts and other permanent‑affordability models scale statewide.

Why it matters: Advocate testimony tied investor purchases to rapid rent escalation, condo conversion and unit loss, and argued that these market dynamics are already shifting entire neighborhoods. They framed rent stabilization and tenant purchase tools as measures that can protect households now while the Commonwealth pursues longer‑term production and preservation strategies.

Key facts from testimony: Homes for All cited MAPC and housing‑navigator research showing the current supply of affordable rental homes serves about 32% of lower‑income households; that study estimated 441,000 lower‑income households lack access to affordable rental homes statewide. Mass Law Reform and other legal groups highlighted implementation successes for eviction‑record sealing and early access‑to‑counsel pilot results; early data presented to the committee showed hundreds of sealing petitions filed and that access‑to‑counsel openings have prevented or delayed eviction in a large share of cases handled so far.

Preservation tools discussed included community land trusts and stronger tenant right‑to‑purchase programs. Homes for All and Mass Law Reform pointed to Dudley Neighbors Inc. in Boston as an example of community land trust homeownership and cited tenant opportunity to purchase as a mechanism to take units off the speculative market and retain them as permanently affordable.

Remaining questions and next steps: Advocates asked the legislature to enable municipalities with a broader set of local tools, fund tenant technical assistance for redevelopment, expand foreclosure mediation and increase the share of bond and tax‑credit funding allocated to preservation and homeownership. Several speakers noted that some funding lines and program rules currently exclude rural and seasonal communities and asked the committee to remedy geographic inequities in program eligibility and scoring.

Ending note: Tenant advocates framed their recommendations as both immediate and systemic: they called for revenue‑neutral and targeted protections to prevent displacement now, and for more preservation funding and program fixes to hold housing affordable in the long term.