Apartment landlords would be required to notify city officials of evictions so they could connect tenants with legal resources and financial aid under proposed legislation supported by Boston Mayor Martin Walsh.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh wants to give renters new protections against eviction in the city’s ever-inflating real estate market, but the proposal is just one of a series of anti-displacement policies up for consideration in the coming months.
Anti-condo flipping legislation and giving tenants the right of first refusal to acquire apartment buildings that are being sold are among the proposals being considered by the administration, said Sheila Dillon, director of the department of neighborhood development.
Walsh last week announced his support for new legal conditions required for eviction, essentially banning so-called “no-fault” evictions. Conditions include failure to pay rent, violation of lease terms and using the apartment for illegal purposes. The new law would not apply to properties with fewer than seven units, or those owned or maintained by colleges and universities. And landlords could evict tenants to make the apartment available for family members.
“This is an attempt to give more protections to residents who have lived in buildings for decades,” Dillon said. “They’re being asked to leave and empty out a building when units are going to be renovated and made into more luxury rentals.”
But groups that represent landlords say the law will be abused by those who know how to work the system and potentially discourage new development and building upkeep.
“We’ve had a number of our developer members say they very likely wouldn’t go to Boston as a place to build, because it creates a whole framework that’s untenable,” said Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. “And these are market-rate developers.”
Named the Jim Brooks Stabilization Act after a Roxbury housing activist with City Life/Vida Urbana who died this year, the proposed home rule petition is being reviewed by a city council committee. Dillon said it’s primarily designed to protect tenants whose leases or tenant at-will agreements are terminated by owners looking to reposition properties for higher rent structures.
City officials also want to create new requirements for landlords to report eviction notices within two days of notifying the tenant. Currently, the city does not have any way of tracking eviction activity.
The reporting requirement is potentially the most important part of the legislation, Dillon said. It would help city agencies to reach out to tenants facing eviction and provide resources and guidance on legal assistance and rent arrearage assistance. And the city would be able to identify neighborhood hotspots where gentrification is leading to substantial displacement.
Apartment dwellers in Boston already enjoy some protections from displacement by condo conversions under a 2014 ordinance sponsored by City Councilor Josh Zakim. That gave tenants a minimum relocation stipend of $6,000 if their building is converted to condos, requiring developers to provide a year’s advance notice and up to five years for elderly, low-income and handicapped tenants.
Fears Of ‘Back-Door Rent Control’
City officials say there have been no discussions about bringing back rent control, which was repealed in 1994 by a statewide ballot referendum. But landlord groups say language in the proposed legislation that lists “refusal to pay reasonable rent” as a cause for eviction would have the same effect.
“It’s a back door to rent control because there are provisions that would allow the courts to determine if a fair rent has been offered,” said Sarah Mathewson, a senior vice president at AvalonBay Communities and president of the Rental Housing Association. “And that would be hard as a landlord to establish. I have access to a lot of data, but this is pretty onerous for the small landlords.”
The law would make it harder for to evict tenants convicted of criminal activity, one of the fastest paths to eviction, Mathewson said.
Tenant protection rights are just one prong of Walsh’s housing program, with other initiatives seeking to encourage development of a wider range of multifamily housing types.
The BPDA is considering offering density bonuses in targeted areas such as the Jamaica Plain-Roxbury study area and Dorchester Avenue in South Boston for developers who include more affordable and workforce housing than the city’s 13-percent minimum standard.
Administration officials also have been studying anti-condo flipping laws and requirements that apartment tenants be given right of first refusal to buy the property and form a coop when a landlord puts the property on the market, which is a legal requirement in the District of Columbia.
Walsh’s housing plan announced in 2014 seeks to add 53,000 units citywide by 2030. Since then, 11,907 have been completed, 7,183 are under construction, another 13,297 have been approved and 7,593 more are in the permitting pipeline, according to the Department of Neighborhood Development.
“There’s a lot of foreign investment right now and there’s a lot of money in housing so everything’s being looked at,” Dillon said. “In the end, our goal is always how far can we push, how much can we extract (from developers) without chilling development.”
