EASTHAMPTON — The city’s Rent Study Committee — a group of renters, landlords and developers — is making progress drafting an Easthampton-specific form of rent stabilization, which aims to provide relief to tenants as rents have skyrocketed.
“I was lucky,” Rent Study Committee member and city tenant Carl Sailor said about a rent increase he received last December. “I was only getting a $50 increase in our particular complex, but we heard [about] increases as high as $350.”
The committee was established by the City Council last September to address the rent increases many like Sailor have faced in Easthampton. Some landlords have raised rents by hundreds of dollars over the past year and a half to keep up with rising costs.
Sailor, who is also a member of the Easthampton Tenants Union, joined the committee to bring a tenant’s perspective. The group is nearing one year of work drafting a home-rule petition aiming to create a rent stabilization policy that would work for both tenants and landlords.
“We really want to include as much community input as we can,” said City Councilor At-Large Kiam Jamrog-McQuaid, who chairs the committee. “We know this is an issue that people feel very strongly about.”
The committee released a survey late last month inviting all residents to share which components they would like to see incorporated in such a policy. Jamrog-McQuaid said in an interview Thursday that there have already been roughly 80 responses to the survey, which closes on Aug. 14.
Jamrog-McQuaid said the committee hopes to get a first draft to the council by its second meeting in September. Once approved by the council, the petition will be sent to the State House for consideration. Under Massachusetts law, a community seeking to impose mandatory rent stabilization would need state authorization.
Jamrog-McQuaid also spearheaded a resolution, passed by the Council in March, establishing a Housing Crisis Task Force.
There are many rent stabilization factors the committee is considering: an annual rent increase limit, or cap, that landlords cannot exceed; exemptions that would allow for a landlord to exceed the cap if a repair needs to be made, a Proposition 2½ override passes or utility costs increases; which properties would be exempt, such as owner-occupied buildings; how the policy would be enforced; and what conditions would allow for a landlord to evict someone.
Committee member and Easthampton landlord David Boyle, who co-owns A-Z Properties, said it has been important to have a mix of tenants, landlords and developers on the committee. While the petition aims to help tenants, he said it is also important that it doesn’t scare off housing developers or hurt landlords.
“If we can draft a good ordinance that suits Easthampton, that’s not a boilerplate (used for other communities) we will be in good shape and I think we’ll end up there,” Boyle said in an interview.
Landlords face a lot of rising costs across utilities, insurance and general maintenance, Boyle said. For those in Easthampton, they also face an increase in property taxes in the wake of a $6.9 million override approved by voters in June.
Sailor said his landlord, North Arlow LLC, claimed that his increase was due to the potential rent control ballot measure for the upcoming state election. That question has since been scrapped by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled the petition was unconstitutional.
“Obviously each town is its own body, so any particular bit of legislation has to be specifically crafted to the environment we have here (in Easthampton),” Sailor said.
Without a ballot question, renters have continued to push legislators to pass bill S.1477 and its companion H.2328, which would give municipalities a local option to adopt rent stabilization. However, both have been sitting on Beacon Hill for more than a year and a half now.
As for a home-rule petition, committee members have shared reservations about the likelihood that legislators would accept such a request.
The home-rule petition will attempt to override the state’s 1994 ban on local adoptions of rent control. Jamrog-McQuaid said the committee is using other home-rule petitions from communities like Somerville and Boston as a model. Boston’s petition, an initiative that started in March 2022 by Mayor Michelle Wu, died in the State House.
Precinct 2 City Councilor Felicia Jadczak, a landlord of one unit in the city who also sits on the committee, said members also recognize action needs to be taken sooner rather than later.
“Everyone agrees there is a problem and we’re trying to figure out how to fix it,” Jadczak said in an interview. “This committee was formed out of very active and engaged residents in Easthampton, who were primarily all renters, coming to [City] Council and sharing their stories of their rents being increased by wild percentages.”
Along with the survey, the committee has also held two separate listening sessions in May to solicit feedback: one for tenants and the other for landlords.
Naresh Patel of Easthampton, who has been in the real estate business for roughly 15 years, said at the landlord listening session that he has kept many of his tenants happy by raising monthly rents by moderate amounts. But when a big expense comes, he may need to raise rents to match the cost.
Patel worries about a potential cap that would constrict his ability to raise rents. He said landlords shouldn’t be raising rents by $300 to $500 and that the committee’s work started after “one investor” from outside Massachusetts did that.
Tenants from a 10-unit complex at 17 Adams St., which was purchased by Hurricane Properties LLC of South Carolina in April last year, and from properties owned by Easthampton-based Pine Valley Realty, have also reported experiencing steep rent increases.
While Sailor said the group is making good progress, he hopes the committee will find more tenants to join, saying that their voices need to be heard.
“You might hear all the landlords complaining about costs going up. Costs are going up for us (renters) first,” Sailor said.
