Controlling Rent

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by Kristen Lombardi

EVICTION FREE ZONE activist Bill Marcotte says he wants state regulations put in place to end landlord "profiteering."

Not everyone has experienced such a victory, though. While some tenants have reached settlements allowing them to stay, others have agreed to leave by as early as January, or to pay higher increases in exchange for repairs. And for Nancy Neyard, who has lived at 65 Dana Street for 24 years, the future remains wide open. After finding herself in court earlier this month, she now awaits a verdict in her eviction case. (At press time, Neyard learned that she, too, could stay in her apartment -- at least for now.)

But not even Neyard appears worse off than before. After all, these tenants have managed to buy themselves much-needed time to come to grips with their housing situations. And those who will leave are doing so on their own terms.

For the Dana Street tenants, however, their eight-month battle was about more than fighting for their homes. It's become a matter of principle. Landlords should not gouge tenants, they believe. Turning a profit may be good -- outright greed is not. As Doyle says, "We wanted to make a point that [landlords] have no right to throw out long-term tenants to make a buck."

To be sure, the Dana Street fight shows that tenant organizing, by itself, cannot solve the housing crisis. According to Michael Stone, a professor of community planning at UMass Boston who wrote the recent McCormack Institute report "Situation Critical: Meeting Housing Needs of Lower-Income Massachusetts Residents," organizing has long faced constraints. The landlord-tenant relationship, in essence, pits the landlord's desire for profit against the tenant's need for housing. Such conflicting forces may be resolved among affluent people. But when it comes to low-income folks, he says, the relationship is "irreconcilable": "tenants will always be in weak positions, treated as second-class citizens subject to whims of landlords."

Solving the housing crisis, then, requires more than a push to achieve tenants' rights. "Organizing is important," Stone explains, "but it needs to be infused with a larger vision."

That vision certainly must include simple economics, since the current demand far outstrips supply. The September 14 report released by Cardinal Law, which was conducted by Northeastern University researchers, concludes that the only way to stem market forces driving costs out of control is to build more housing. In the next five years, the study says, Boston must construct 36,000 new units beyond the annual production rate of 8500 units today.

But construction isn't the sole solution. Every day, affordable units under Section 8 programs are lost as landlords convert them into market-rate dwellings. To preserve the existing base, UMass's Stone suggests changing the type of housing so nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and tenants become owners. "These models," he says, "provide tenants with opportunity to achieve dignity."

Maybe so. Yet "socially owned housing," as it's known, isn't likely to replace the rental market anytime soon. That's why tenant groups like EFZ also look to legislation. There's little doubt, after all, that the crisis stems from the 1995 abolition of rent control. EFZ activist Bill Cavellini notes, "If landlords displayed restraint now, there wouldn't be such a need for an infusion of cash for affordable housing."

So what Cavellini and fellow activists want are regulations. They don't necessarily call for a return to rent control, which is politically unlikely, but for a cap on the percentage that rents can be raised each year. Equally important, they add, is the need to restore eviction protections for tenants, who now confront the threat of displacement for no other reason than greed. As Bill Marcotte, the EFZ activist who organized the Dana Street tenants, puts it: "We want regulations so we don't have to see the profiteering that goes on any longer."

All these strategies take time, of course -- too much time, if you're a tenant struggling to stay ahead. Tenant organizing, however, can be done immediately and thus plays a vital role in seeking solutions. Indeed, the dozens of tenant associations that have emerged put a face on the crisis, and this has prompted a response. The statewide advocacy group Greater Boston Interfaith Organization persuaded Beacon Hill lawmakers to spend $100 million over five years on an affordable-housing fund after spearheading a 100,000-signature petition drive this year. And last week, Boston mayor Thomas Menino committed another $30 million to affordable housing -- largely because of activists' efforts.

That thousands are stressing the need for affordable housing is something that wouldn't have happened even two years ago. And the trend bodes well for what activists describe as the newfound tenant movement -- one that will flex its muscle on November 4, when groups like the EFZ, City Life, and Boston Tenant Coalition hold a march for housing justice. Their resolve: to put a stop to what they call "rent gouging and evictions for profit," and to press for permanent affordable housing.

As Doyle of the Dana Street Tenants Association says, "We've become part of something larger. It behooves us to help others who face what we did."

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