At a rally in front of the State House on Tuesday, Oct. 29, Rep. Nika Elugardo said the rent control movement is "moving beyond preaching to the choir." Photo by Sam Doran | State House News Service

While housing activists and progressive state legislators rallied for rent control legislation on the steps of the State House Tuesday, a co-chair of the state legislator’s Housing Committee said anti-development municipalities were blocking legislation that would help build more housing.

Rep. Kevin Honan, co-chair of the Housing Committee, on Tuesday told the News Service that he supports Gov. Charlie Baker’s bill (H.3507), which would lower the voting threshold needed for zoning changes from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority, remains stalled in committee despite repeated attempts by the administration to advance it.

Honan said the legislature still has more work to do to get stakeholders on board because “some municipalities do not embrace density.”

“This bill has local implications and ramifications, so we need to continue to build support,” Honan said. “Some of our colleagues in certain communities are never going to be comfortable going from two-thirds majority to a simple majority. Nonetheless, though, we have a crisis in Massachusetts, so I support the bill.”

Asked about rent control, Honan said the topic is neither off the table nor finding consensus support among the committee. The governor’s zoning bill, he said, has been a bigger priority.

Backers of the rent control bills, many of whom count themselves among the legislature’s progressive wing, have said they do not oppose Baker’s housing-production bill but see it as insufficient on its own to address the burden that many low-income and minority communities face from rising housing costs.

On Monday, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka gave voice to taking up a housing bill, but didn’t offer any timeline.

If a bill emerges for House debate, DeLeo said he would expect a legislator to file a rent control amendment, but added, “I think probably most of our interest probably revolves around the issue of housing legislation as filed by the governor.”

“We’re looking forward to doing a housing bill,” said Spilka, who declined to offer her opinion of rent control other than saying lawmakers would look at the idea.

Fed up with high housing costs and the lack of action on Beacon Hill, activists and lawmakers rallied Tuesday in support of legislation that would re-enable rent control, which was banned statewide in a ballot question that narrowly passed in 1994. Almost every speaker described the housing market in Massachusetts and particularly greater Boston as a “crisis” or an “emergency.” Several speakers shared personal experiences about being displaced by rapid increases in housing prices.

“The housing crisis is moving beyond the poorest of the poor,” said Rep. Nika Elugardo, D-Boston, who co-filed one of the bills that would allow communities to implement rent control. “The housing crisis has moved into the middle class and is creeping up beyond the middle class. Now that so-called ‘everyday people’ are experiencing the pain of the housing crisis, people are beginning to question how we do business around here.”

Two bills before the legislature would revive the ability for municipalities to implement rent control. One filed by Cambridge Rep. David Rogers (H.1316) focuses only on rent control, while another co-filed by Elugardo and Cambridge Rep. Mike Connolly (H.3924) includes it in a range of other tenant protection options.

Despite support from elected officials including Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu and Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, the proposals face skepticism in the State House. Rogers’ bill has only nine cosponsors, while Connolly and Elugardo’s has 19 out of the body’s 160 members.

Gov. Charlie Baker, who in March described rent control as “exactly the wrong direction we should go,” said Monday that lawmakers should instead focus on boosting housing production as a way to open up a stressed market.

“I think the best way to deal with all issues around pricing is to increase supply. In Massachusetts we’re decades behind where we should be with respect to building housing and creating more supply,” Baker told reporters when asked about rent control. “We’ve added 600,000 people to our population in the last 20 years. We’ve added a fraction of the housing that would be required to support that significant increase in our population.”