01.12.2022

Rent Control Lite | Where Dems stand | Strip mall housing | Lt. Gov. frenzy | Vaccine jockeying

Look for us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

With ‘rent stabilization’ going nowhere in 2022, get ready for rent control lite

A State House hearing Tuesday on rent control bills predictably generated a flurry of stories.

But short of Gov. Charlie Baker being abducted by aliens – or angry Trumpies - there’s little chance of rent control passing in 2022.

Not so, though, for what is shaping up to be rent-control lite, Sen. Pat Jahlen’s proposal to give renters first crack at buying their building should the landlord put it up for sale.

The real beneficiaries, though, are likely to be nonprofit housing developers who have been pushed aside in more than one bidding war for apartment buildings by cash-rich investors and speculators.

Significantly, tenants can turn over their rights to their local community development corporation, or CDC, in order to preserve the affordability of their units.

Looking at D.C., which enacted a similar provision decades ago, housing advocates see the potential to effectively convert thousands of market-rate apartments into affordable units.

“It is not the solution to affordable housing, but it’s the quickest and cheapest way to ensure that some housing be permanently affordable,” the Somerville Democrat told Contrarian Boston in a Wednesday afternoon interview.

In contrast with rent control, the bill has a real chance of actually making it into law this year.

The Legislature actually passed a version of the bill last year, but it came after the end of the session, so they were unable to override Baker’s veto. “We don’t think there is a big problem with it – we would like to see that move,” Jehlen said.

Still, it wasn’t all smooth sailing down in D.C. City officials had to revamp the law a few years ago in order to close a major loophole that had tenants selling off their purchase options to private investors, sometimes netting $10,000 or more.

Jehlen’s proposal attempts to head off this issue, with tenants restricted to selling or transferring their rights to nonprofits or the city.

Given the timing issues last year, Jehlen is pushing for the Joint Committee on Housing to report out the bill before the Feb. 2nd deadline.

Needless to say, the proposal has triggered strong opposition from local rental building owners and landlords, who contend this is the wrong solution to a chronic and complex affordability problem.

One of the concerns – and it’s a big one - is the lengthy process the landlord must commit to if the tenants decide to make an offer or assign their purchase rights to a nonprofit developer. Altogether, we are talking about a period of several months to negotiate a purchase and sales agreement and close a financing package.

For a CDC or other nonprofit housing developer that needs time to line up bank financing, that’s a significant boost.

But for landlords who may already have private investors lining up, cash in hand, ready and eager to close, that’s a really, really long wait.

Still, one wonders if rental property owners would be better off negotiating, instead of hoping that the clock will run out on the proposal, as happened last year.

At the very least, housing advocates appear willing to tighten up that timeline, a compromise of sorts.

Or talk to Jahlen. “If you have a problem, let us know what it is, and we will fix it,” she said.

Where Dems stand on rent control

While Jahlen pushes her bill, the idea of traditional rent control faces steep odds of passing this year, which advocates surely know.

That’s because they have their eyes on 2023, when chances are better than even Massachusetts will have a Democratic governor again. Still, who eventually wins will make a big difference in how eagerly or not the next governor, presuming it’s a Democrat, embraces the issue.

The two currently declared candidates – Harvard professor Danielle Allen and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz - are both strong supporters of giving cities and towns the ability to regulate rents.

But Attorney General Maura Healey’s views on the hot-button issue are less known, though it will become a big question should she quit playing Hamlet and jump into the race.

There’s also ambiguity around former-Boston-mayor-turned-federal-labor-boss Marty Walsh’s stance, with Walsh far from an unabashed supporter of the idea.

One very wild idea, courtesy of NYT: A Biden/Cheney ticket

Is it as likely as Build Back Better finally passing? We’ll see. But the idea of a Dem and Republican sharing the same presidential ticket was something that sort of happened recently in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu, a more cerebral version of Trump, was succeeded by a power-sharing coalition.

Given the huge stakes in 2024 – does anyone think Trump, if elected, would ever willingly leave office again? – such a pairing, or something similar to it, might be needed to save the country, Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues.

Here’s thinking Vice President Kamala Harris is less than thrilled with Friedman’s idea.

Next big thing in development: strip mall housing

Or so says a new report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which sees the potential for as many as 124,000 new homes, condos and apartments where half-empty strip malls now stand.

A case in point is the old Woburn Mall, now reborn as a mixed-used development called Woburn Village.

While that’s a lot of housing, it would only take 10 percent of the smaller strip-mall/shopping plaza sites out there to get to that six-figure number.

Still, given the huge appetite by the state’s booming life sciences sector for new development sites, housing developers could find themselves facing fierce competition for empty mall sites.

Plans for a 20-story tower in downtown Quincy have been scrapped, the Patriot-Ledger reports, with FoxRock Properties moving ahead with new plans for a medical office and life sciences building.

Then there were 11

Yes, count ‘em, that’s how many Democrats have either officially announced or are seriously considering a run for lieutenant governor after Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll threw her hat in the ring on Wednesday.

Driscoll’s interest in what is widely considered to be a mainly ceremonial job is somewhat surprising given her strong record in Salem, including success in pushing new housing development.

In fact, Driscoll had previously considered running for governor and even U.S. Senate, CommonWealth Magazine notes.

If nothing else, it sounds like Driscoll and other LG candidates have read the tea leaves and see few other opportunities – either on the state or Congressional level – of moving up right now.

Boston police, firefighters’ unions strike out in preliminary vaccine mandate challenge

Really, this is the hill they want to die on?

Suffolk Superior Judge Jeffrey Locke on Wednesday declined to issue an injunction halting Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s vaccine mandate, poised to go into effect Saturday, the Herald reports.

 “I think the public health emergency now is of such a nature that it outweighs the competing claims of harm by the plaintiff,” Locke said.

Filing suit are the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society and Boston Firefighters Union Local 718, which argue the city skipped over steps in the negotiation process in their contracts.

Given the vocal opposition that Wu has faced from antivaxxers, one wonders whether contract technicalities are really the issue here.

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.

For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.

An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.

Our focus is:

·      Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;

·      Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;

·      The media and why it does what it does;

·      Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;

·      And whatever else catches our fancy.

Contrarian Boston seeks contributors

Have a news tip? Is there an issue you would like to see explored? Interested in writing up a news item or short opinion piece? As Contrarian Boston gets on its feet, I would like to add more news and a wider range of commentary as well.

Intrigued? Drop me a line at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.

Thanks for reading and see you Friday.