Controlling rent

Tenants squeezed by the tight housing market are fighting back by refusing to pay higher rents. And guess what? Some are winning their battles in court.

by Kristen Lombardi

FIGHTING BACK: when Kerry Doyle's rent was raised 25 percent, he didn't pay it, nor did he move out. His landlord took him to court - but Doyle won.

If you think fixing Social Security is tough, try finding an answer for the Massachusetts housing crisis. Letting market forces solve the problem, as Governor Paul Cellucci infamously suggested during a Rental Housing Association forum last year, is not working. Free-market theory, after all, presumes that developers will construct housing for everyone, including low- and moderate-income tenants. Yet almost all are building luxury condos. That said, state regulation of the rental market wasn't exactly a resounding success. Landlords had no incentive to maintain properties. And people who could afford the market managed to secure sweet deals: in Cambridge, for instance, former mayor Ken Reeves came to embody the divisive debate by living in a rent-controlled apartment for years.

But there's no question that something must be done. Consider that a typical two-bedroom apartment in Boston now rents for $1495 per month -- yet an average family can afford only $700, according to the Boston Tenant Coalition. When the first statewide waiting list opened last March for federal Section 8 housing subsidies (which provide rental-payment assistance to very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled), 17,000 people -- half of all Section 8 applicants in the state -- applied for help at the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, a nonprofit agency. And according to a recent study by the city's Department of Neighborhood Development, the average rent downtown -- $1700 per month -- has soared 65 percent higher than the maximum allowed under Section 8 rental-certificate guidelines. Even in traditionally affordable neighborhoods like Allston-Brighton and Roxbury, rents go for as much as 35 percent more than the Section 8 limit of $1077 per month.

Bernard Cardinal Law has described the shrinking stock of affordable housing as a "moral crisis" tantamount to a natural disaster. Just last month, the archdiocese released a comprehensive report on the issue, which found that even the shabbiest of apartments have become so expensive that thousands cannot afford any housing here.

All this has sparked an outcry not unlike that of washed-up news anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." From Jamaica Plain to Allston-Brighton to Cambridge, more and more people caught in the volatile market are banding together to fight for their homes. And in the process, they're sowing the seeds of a movement that could offer long-term solutions to the crisis.

In Mission Hill, tenants at a 31-unit building on Darling Street organized after every Section 8 recipient discovered an eviction notice in the mail last January. Residents at a 56-unit building on Tennis Road in Mattapan have spent the past two months working with the Jamaica Plain-based tenant-advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana to negotiate with their landlord, who raised rents by an average of $300 per month. Over in Cambridge, meanwhile, tenant associations have popped up on Inman Street, Norfolk Street, and Western Avenue after landlords jacked up rents by as much as $700 per month and handed out eviction notices, a standard practice.

Consider, if you will, the battle at 65 Dana Street in Cambridge, where eight tenants formed the Dana Street Tenants Association after receiving rent hikes of up to 40 percent last February. It wasn't as if these tenants hadn't expected an increase. Kerry Doyle, for one, a 40-year-old writer turned Web producer, had moved into his modest one-bedroom apartment in 1993, at the tail end of rent control. Ever since such regulations were abolished in 1995, he has watched one neighbor after another flee the area's rapidly rising rents in favor of Somerville -- and, when that became too expensive, Chelsea and Everett. Each year, his own rent has grown in steady yet gentle increments of $50 and $70 per month.

But when Doyle got a letter announcing that his rent would be raised $150 per month, he balked. "I thought, `What happened to being reasonable?' " he recalls. Anger gave way to panic. He worried that he couldn't afford the hike. If he sucked it up, his rent would have risen 25 percent, to $850 per month -- over 30 percent of his paycheck. And because he didn't have an annual lease, there was nothing to stop him from getting another big increase, and another one after that.

So Doyle spoke with his fellow tenants. He found out that the hikes varied from $100 to $150 to $250 per month, bringing rents of formerly rent-controlled one-bedroom units to an equal $850. In talking with his neighbors, he also learned that some of them had sought help from activists at Eviction Free Zone (EFZ), a tenant-advocacy group in Cambridge. The activists gave Doyle options. And so, he did what few renters think to do: he didn't pay the increase and he didn't leave -- he negotiated. "I figured we had nothing to lose," he recalls.

Right before the increase went into effect in March, Doyle and his colleagues sent a letter to their landlord, Cambridge-based Cacciola Associates, announcing the formation of the association. Their purpose, they said, was to bargain for a fair hike allowing them to stay. Cacciola Associates, the tenants reasoned, are not small landlords grappling with mounting taxes and utility costs. The family bought the 33-unit building at 65 Dana Street in 1976 for $121,000. Today, the building has an assessed value of $2.5 million. Although the Cacciolas pay $24,225 a year in taxes -- a nearly twofold boost since rent control ended -- they collect anywhere from $277,200 to $445,500 in rental income. It certainly looks as if they could afford to lessen increases for tenants, some of whom have lived at 65 Dana Street for decades. So the association made an offer: it asked for four percent ($28) and eight percent ($56) increases for low- and moderate-income tenants (who earn about $20,000 to $40,000), as well as one-year leases.

It was the first of many proposals. From the start, Cacciola Associates never acknowledged the association. (Landlord Edward Cacciola did not return phone calls for this article.) Instead, they dealt with some tenants individually, while ignoring others. Negotiations dragged on. Promises were broken. Once, for example, the Cacciolas offered a 10 percent increase and a one-year lease. Days later, they withdrew the bid. Compromise seemed a distant dream when eviction notices arrived by mail last June.

Despite such setbacks, tenants persevered. They appealed to the Cambridge City Council, which passed three orders that, although symbolic, urged Cacciola Associates to negotiate in good faith. They enlisted help from State Representative Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge), who wrote to Cacciola Associates on the tenants' behalf. They even caravaned to Arlington and Reading to picket in front of their landlords' homes.

When Doyle walked into a courtroom for the first time on August 17, his landlord offered him what he calls a "half-baked deal." He could continue to pay his old rent if he moved out within 90 days. Although one tenant accepted the bid rather than face the judge, Doyle refused. "I hadn't worked hard to win a paltry deal," he says. "The point was to buy time so we wouldn't have to scramble to find a place."

Six weeks later, the battle ended for Doyle. On October 5, the judge ruled that Doyle could stay in his apartment, awarding him a nominal yet "worthwhile" sum in damages because of the poor condition of his well-worn home. "I was amazed by the verdict," he says. "Just ecstatic."

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Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.