Attorney General Maura Healey suggested she wouldn’t sign a statewide rent control bill as governor
Lawyer Standard Maura Healey advised Friday she would not signal a lease management monthly bill if it reached her desk as governor but later clarified via a marketing campaign spokesperson that she supports municipal stage hire stabilization and not a statewide coverage.
Hire manage has been championed by politicians like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, whose city is dealing with skyrocketing housing and apartment costs, as a way to preserve tenants in their residences. But it has been fulfilled with criticism from landlords and other public officers who say the notion would limit housing provide and damage property tax revenues.
Healey, talking at the Boston Community Library in the course of a GBH Information “Boston Public Radio” interview, mentioned rent handle is not the answer to growing housing expenses, and as a substitute pointed to rental assistance as a way to help inhabitants.
“I’m a big believer in building confident that all those needing rental guidance have support. But I assume the way you get there, the all round photograph, it is not by lease stabilization,” the Democratic gubernatorial applicant said. “It’s by the generation of additional housing. We need to have a lot more housing. We will need extra very affordable housing across cash flow degrees and we will need to glimpse to produce this statewide.”
A campaign spokesperson for Healey clarified the lawyer general’s placement adhering to the GBH job interview.
“Maura supports the suitable of communities to apply their individual insurance policies on lease stabilization,” the spokesperson claimed. “She does not believe that that a blanket statewide plan necessitating rent management is the solution to our housing affordability crisis.
Wu ran for mayor of Boston on a platform that incorporated lifting a ban on hire control that was set into position via a 1994 ballot question. In March 2020, she produced a committee to review hire stabilization and at some point produce a proposal to send to the Legislature subsequent session.
In a assertion at the time, Wu said cities across the United States use rent stabilization as a resource “to shield tenants and hold households in their residences.”
“If we are not inclined to consider on the lease will increase that are driving family members out of Boston, then we aren’t assembly the requires of our neighborhoods,” Wu said.
Healey explained transportation investments could also assistance people come across extra very affordable housing.
“South Coastline rail, East-West rail, making out and far better supporting our regional transit authorities — all of this is actually, genuinely significant,” Healey claimed.
Gov. Charlie Baker has earlier said he would “probably not” signal a legislation bringing back again lease regulate if it have been to make it to his desk, the Point out House Information Support noted.
During a Drop 2021 interview on GBH, Baker stated just one problem with hire handle “is basically it did not handle everybody the same and your earnings experienced absolutely nothing to do with no matter if or not you experienced a lease-managed apartment.”
“I’m likely to leave the doorway open a small little bit for the reason that possibly there is something that could be performed to deal with this,” Baker explained.
