Biz execs eye $30 million ad blitz against Mass. rent control proposal | Boston shoppers gouged by big retail chains with faulty pricetags | Pressley out |
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Fight of the century: Real estate execs vow to spend tens of millions to defeat a proposal that would cap rents across Massachusetts and kill plans for new apartments
Welcome to Massachusetts, the future rent control capital of the world.
Progressive activists are pushing for a state ballot question that would slap strict limits on rent increases, making it the most restrictive law of its kind in the country.
And backers of the Keep Massachusetts Home campaign submitted 90,000 certified signatures to the Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday, thousands more than needed, per State House News Service.
Now real estate execs and other business leaders are teaming up to stop this bid to bring back rent control, which state voters banned in the early 1990s.
Opponents plan to raise and spend as much as $30 million on an ad blitz and other efforts to defeat the rent control proposal, Tamara Small, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, told Contrarian Boston.
Rent control would kill plans to build new apartments at a time when Massachusetts faces a dire housing shortage that has made the state one of the most expensive in the country in which to rent or buy, she said.
“We are really going to be pushing out the message to voters to make sure they understand the harm this will do,” Small said. “To be blunt, this would be catastrophic.”
The proposal wouldn’t go before voters until next November - provided it survives the legal challenges that opponents have vowed - but it is already shaping up to be one of the most expensive political fights in state history.
“$30 million would definitely be one of, if not the most, expensive ballot campaigns in history,” Doug Rubin, founding partner of Northwind Strategies, told Contrarian Boston.
Still, the big financial commitment by opponents of the rent control ballot question reflects the high stakes involved.
The proposed rent control law would apply to every city and town, from the Berkshires to the Cape, while rent increases would be limited to 5 percent a year at most. Given the proposal pegs increases to the Consumer Price Index, in reality, it would be closer to 2.5 percent, Small said.
At a time when the state faces a housing shortage of more than 200,000 units, the new law would cripple the development of new apartment projects while making the housing crisis worse, Small contends.
Sure, the law exempts new construction for ten years. But developers say that is not enough to make it worthwhile to spend years - and millions of dollars - slogging through restrictive local permitting regulations and reviews, NAIOP’s Small said.
And even simply proposing a rent control law can be enough to spook investors looking for new apartment buildings and developments to put their money into, she added.
However, the challenge will be getting that message across to voters fuming over sky-high rents.
Support for the ballot question tops 62 percent, according to a recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll.
And while $30 million is certainly a lot of money, Rubin of Northwind Strategies cautioned that the money “is no guarantee of victory in the current political climate we live in” and “will provide ammunition for the other side.”
The coalition of real estate and business execs and groups opposing the rent control campaign needs “to really understand the electorate right now in order to win that fight - money alone won’t get it done,” Rubin added.
Inflation is bad, but this is worse: Walgreens, other major chains in Boston hit with fines for overcharging customers for vitamins, other products, in some cases by nearly double
By Colman M. Herman
Retail prices are outrageous!
A can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup, for example, is four bucks. A bottle of 100 Tylenol, 13 smackers. The price of vitamins is through the roof.
So when consumers pay more than the price actually marked on the goods, it is exponentially more troubling.
Enter Walgreens.
