Does Rent Control Work? What Massachusetts Just Learned Again

Rent control keeps coming back around here, and I understand why. Rents in Greater Boston are punishing. The average two-bedroom in Massachusetts runs about $2,580 a month, roughly 44 percent above the national average. When your rent jumps and your paycheck does not, a cap on increases sounds like relief. It sounds fair.

I have sat on both sides of this. I have represented landlords trying to make the math work on a triple-decker, and I have represented tenants staring down an increase they could not absorb. I feel the squeeze in both chairs. So I want to walk through what actually happened with the 2026 measure, and then be straight with you about what the research shows, because the honest picture matters more than the talking points on either side.

What happened to the 2026 rent control ballot question?

Supporters gathered real momentum. They collected well over 100,000 signatures, and the state certified more than 88,000 of them. The measure would have capped annual rent increases statewide at the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever came in lower. It carried exemptions for new construction under ten years old and for smaller owner-occupied buildings. Polling had it ahead.

Then it died on a technicality most people never saw coming. The measure exempted units in facilities operated solely for religious purposes. In June 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the exemption sank the whole petition, because the state constitution forbids ballot initiatives that relate to religion. Justice Frank Gaziano wrote that by carving out a religious exemption, the petition made religion a factor in how the law would apply. That was enough. The question never reached voters.

Worth underlining: the court did not rule on whether rent control is good policy. If the legislature passed the same law tomorrow, it would be perfectly constitutional. The measure failed on how it was written, not on what it tried to do.

Does rent control actually work?

Here is where I want to slow down, because the answer is not a slogan. Rent control does one thing reliably. It lowers rent for the people who already hold a capped unit. That benefit is real, and for an older tenant on a fixed income who has lived in the same place for twenty years, it can be the difference between staying and leaving. Nobody should wave that away.

The trouble is what happens around that tenant over time. Economists have studied this in the places that lived it, and the pattern is stubborn.

Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond and her colleagues tracked San Francisco after it expanded rent control in 1994. Landlords of newly capped buildings did the rational thing. They converted units to condos, redeveloped, or pulled properties off the rental market. The supply of rental housing in those buildings fell 15 percent. Citywide rents rose as a result. The tenants who got in early saved billions. Future renters paid billions more. It was close to a wash, just moved from one group of renters to another.

We have our own natural experiment closer to home. When Cambridge ended rent control after the 1994 statewide vote, MIT researchers watched property values climb by about $2 billion over the following decade. Most of that gain came not from the formerly controlled buildings, but from the buildings around them, which had quietly lost value while rent control was in place. In plain terms, capped buildings drag down the block. Owners defer maintenance because they cannot recover the cost, and the deterioration spreads.

I want to be fair, because the story is not one-sided. Newer research from USC and the Urban Institute argues that moderate, well-designed rent stabilization does not have to wreck supply, and that the stability it gives families has real value for health, schooling, and staying rooted in a community. Careful policy design matters. A hard statewide cap set at inflation or 5 percent, whichever is lower, is about the bluntest version of the tool. That is the version voters were nearly handed.

If not caps, then what?

This is the part I care about most, because tearing down an idea without offering a better one is just noise. The affordability problem is real. People are hurting. So what actually moves the needle over the long haul?

Build more housing

Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of new housing production in the country. That is the root of it. When supply is throttled, every renter fights over the same scarce units and prices climb. Zoning reform that allows more homes near transit and in the communities where people want to live is slow, unglamorous work. It is also the only thing that reliably brings rents down by adding real inventory instead of rationing what already exists.

Subsidize the people, not the building

Diamond's own conclusion points here. If we want to protect renters from painful increases, it is far less distortionary to help them directly through subsidies or tax credits than to force landlords to absorb the cost. Aim the help at the households that need it. That way you protect vulnerable renters without giving owners a reason to pull units off the market or let them fall apart.

Pair protections with production

The strongest version of the pro-tenant argument is a both/and, not an either/or. Reasonable eviction protections and targeted stabilization can coexist with aggressive homebuilding. What does not work is leaning on caps alone and expecting the supply problem to solve itself. It never has.

What this means if you rent or own in Greater Boston

For renters: nothing changed on the ground. There is no cap coming for 2026. If your rent is climbing, your leverage is timing, information, and knowing what comparable units actually lease for. That is where I can help, whether or not you ever buy.

For owners and small landlords: the immediate uncertainty lifted, but this issue is not finished. Supporters have already said they will keep pushing, through the legislature or a future ballot. If you own rental property in Belmont, Watertown, Waltham, or the surrounding towns, the smart move is to understand how any future proposal would treat your building before it becomes a headline.

The thing I keep coming back to is this. Everybody in this fight wants the same outcome. They want people to be able to afford to live here. We just disagree on the mechanism. My read, after years in this market and time on both sides of the table, is that the durable fix is more homes and smarter help for the families who need it, not a cap that feels good on day one and quietly narrows the market for years after.

Mike DelRose Jr.

REALTOR® · DelRose McShane Team

Mike is a third-generation REALTOR® and Director of Marketing for the DelRose McShane Team at Coldwell Banker Realty, serving Belmont, Watertown, Waltham, and Greater Boston. He chairs the Greater Boston Association of REALTORS® Grievance Committee and has represented both landlords and tenants across hundreds of transactions.