Rent control in Brookline, Massachusetts limited rents and restricted evictions in many of the town's rental homes from 1970 until statewide repeal took effect in 1995. Brookline first adopted a local rent-control measure in 1969, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck it down for lack of state authorization. After the state granted that authority, Brookline Town Meeting adopted a new bylaw in September 1970 covering approximately 12,000 rental units.
Brookline's Rent Control Board regulated rent increases and reviewed requests to evict tenants or remove apartments from the rental market. As owners converted apartments to condominiums, the town adopted further restrictions on conversions and related evictions. The rules, their effect on rental housing and property taxes, and the presence of higher-income tenants in rent-controlled apartments became subjects of prolonged political dispute.
Following a shift in town politics, Brookline voted in 1990 to phase out rent control for some apartments while retaining protections for certain tenants. Massachusetts voters approved a statewide repeal in 1994, although a majority of Brookline voters opposed it. The repeal took effect on January 1, 1995, with temporary protections subsequently provided for some low-income tenants.
Adoption of rent control Initial attempt + Rent-controlled units in Brookline Date Number of rent-controlled units Notes1970 12,000 1975 11,400 1984 8,000 1988 8,000 1990 4,000-7,000 1991 7,200 1994 4,000-4,500
After a vote to impose rent control in Brookline failed to pass Town Meeting in September 1968, a poll taken leading up to the following election showed that most of the new candidates were drawn to the race so they could vote to limit rents. Votes at Town Meeting failed again in late 1968 and early 1969.
In June 1969, a proposal was adopted to give the Rent Review and Grievance Board the power to cut rents or break leases if tenants complained. There was no appeals process. Landlords were required to report to the Town how much they were collecting in rent, how many rooms each unit had, and how many people were living there. It was the first municipality in the nation, aside for New York City, to impose rent control in the post-war era. Kitty Dukakis was instrumental in the effort to get the law passed.
In June 1970, the Supreme Judicial Court struck down the law, saying the Town did not have the authority to implement rent control without a grant of authorization from the Great and General Court. In the time it had been operating, 62 landlords were ordered to slash their rents and six of them had taken the Town to court.
State law On August 30, 1970, Governor Francis W. Sargent signed into law a bill that authorized rent control in municipalities with more than 50,000 residents, potentially affecting more than 40 communities. The law had an expiration date of April 1974 and then was extended to December 31, 1975, and again to March 31, 1976. After April 1, 1976, special acts were passed for the municipalities who wanted rent control, but there was no state-wide authorization.
Municipalities that opted in were required to establish and administer local rent‑control programs consistent with the statute's standards. The statute froze maximum rents at the amounts charged six months before local adoption, creating an immediate rollback for units whose rents had risen during that period.
The Act applied broadly to existing rental housing but expressly exempted transient accommodations, dwellings built or converted after January 1, 1969, units already regulated under another governmental program, owner‑occupied two‑ and three‑family houses, cooperative or educational housing, and locally defined “luxury” apartments, provided no more than twenty‑five per cent of the locality's rental stock was excluded.
Local adoption On the same day the new statewide rent control act was signed into law, a home rule petition was enacted granting Brookline the power to impose rent control separately. The next day, the Brookline Selectmen called for a special town meeting to adopt a new by-law that would be even stricter than the one approved by the state.
Following four hours of debate on September 29, 1970, front of a crowd of 1,200, the Town Meeting passed, on a roll call vote of 139–93, a new rent control law. It rolled rents back to their March 1 levels. The law covered 12,000 rental units, including 2,200 in two- and three-family houses. In 1976, Town Meeting adopted a new by-law to take effect in place of the statewide law, which was set to expire in a few weeks.
By 1988, the Boston Globe reported that the rent control by-law had "been altered and patched so many times it has become incomprehensible even to those who administer it." In 1993, the law was 178 pages long.
Rent Control Board and Administration State law Local boards in communities with rent control approved or disapproved of increases in the rent to each unit under their jurisdiction. Rent control boards were "akin to a quasi court" and had executive, legislative, and judicial powers. They passed new laws, enforced new laws, and judged whether or not their laws had been violated. The boards were empowered to set maximum rents, promulgate regulations, hold hearings, adjudicate petitions, and employ staff. Housing providers bore the burden of proof during the evidentiary hearings.
Before evicting a tenant from a rent-controlled unit, a landlord first had to secure a certificate of eviction from the board by establishing one of the statute's narrowly defined just causes: non‑payment of rent; the tenant's material violation of lease obligations or creation of a nuisance; owner‑occupancy or occupancy by an immediate family member of the owner; board‑approved plans for substantial rehabilitation or demolition; or the landlord's permanent withdrawal of the dwelling from the rental market.
Hearings were recorded and extensive documentation was required contributing to a judicial atmosphere and exacerbating tensions between tenants, housing providers, the rent control boards and their examiners.
Small property owners who moved out of state needed to return to Massachusetts every time they wished to raise rents or make other changes so that they could appear in person before the rent control boards.
Board decisions were subject to de novo review in the district court, and willful overcharges or unlawful evictions were punishable as criminal offenses.
Brookline's Rent Control Board The Rent Control Board was composed of three public interest representatives, two landlord representatives, and two tenant representatives. In December 1984, the Selectmen rejected a white candidate for the Rent Control Board and told the director to find a minority candidate instead. Infighting on the 7-member board had become so bad in 1993 that a selectman called on the entire board to step down.
Housing providers collected a $14 a month tax from tenants that they then submitted to the Town to fund the Rent Control Board. In 1993, Joel Berkovitz succeeded Yvette Begue as director the Rent Control Board; he earned a salary of $51,704.
The Brookline Tenant Union opposed a proposal before the Rent Control Board that would require tenants to provide their housing providers with a copy of the key to the property they owned.
When rent control was repealed, the Brookline Rent Control Board had an annual budget of $351,000 and a staff of nine full-time and one part-time employees.
Rent increases Rent control was used to keep rents below market value. There was no means-testing and wealthy tenants lived in rent-controlled homes.
The Rent Control Board took more than three months in 1975 to hear petitions for rent increases because they conducted an audit "as exhaustive as the Internal Revenue Service's" on housing providers records to determine what they believed a justifiable rent increase would be; by 1988, it took a year before a hearing was held. The Brookline Tenants Union opposed all across-the-board rent increases, saying that instead each individual housing provider should have to come in and petition the board for an increase.
Housing providers, citing operating costs that rose 24.5% in 1979, asked for a rent increase of 14.7% in 1980. Tenants argued that rents should not be raised at all. The Rent Control Board approved an increase of between 4.4% and 10.1%. This included a 3.6% increase previously granted. The president of the Brookline Property Owners Association accused the Rent Control Board of historically ignoring the impact of inflation when determining rent increases and cited the portion of the rent control law which allowed landlords "a fair net operating income."
From 1972 to 1988, the cost of living rose 187%; the Rent Control Board approved increases in rents of 69%. In more than three years leading up to the 1988 town elections, the Rent Control Board had raised rents by 2.77%. Inflation between 1985 and 1988 was 9.67%.
The Rent Control Board allowed a housing provider to raise rents in order to pay off a $100,000 improvement to his property in 1993. A tenant called it "embezzlement" and said "I feel like I am being stolen from." Part of the money would come from a loan that was forgivable after 10 years if he rented to low- and moderate income tenants. The tenants sued to block the rent increase.
Repairs and upkeep Landlords could not increase rent without permission, even for basic repairs and upkeep, and instead had to submit detailed requests and proposals to the Rent Control Board to "prove" that the work had been done with the cheapest possible materials. Housing providers would have to pay for repairs or to replace broken appliances and then submit receipts to the rent control boards, who were under no obligation to approve increases to recover the costs. Tenants were able to withhold rent in response to alleged faults with their units without providing any evidence.
It could take between six months and two years of adversarial hearings before the Rent Control Board for a decision to be made. If an increase in rent was approved, it could take six weeks to six months before the increase was passed on to the tenant, and it would be temporary. Rents went back down after the cost of the capital improvements were recovered by the landlord. Tenant advocates said that granting any rent increases for repairs, even temporary ones, undermined the idea of rent control itself. Dozens of tenants "stormed a City Council meeting" in Cambridge in 1992, protesting the fact that the rent control board allowed housing providers to increase rents to pay for repairs and upgrades.
When one housing provider spent over $200,000 in capital improvements on his property, the Cambridge Rent Control Board refused to allow him to raise rents to cover the expenses. Not all of the repairs were required, the Board said, because new electrical and water service were not mandated by building or safety codes. The owner sued, and a Superior Court justice ruled that the Board was imposing criteria not found in the regulations; she ruled in favor of the housing provider.
Because of delays in processing applications, inflation ate away at the amount landlords could ultimately collect in rent increases for capital improvements. Economist Herman B. Leonard of Harvard Business School found that landlords received between 70% and 75% of what the Rent Control Board deemed to be "fair." This, he said, was a "dramatic squeeze" on operating budgets, and led to less upkeep, lower quality, and faster deterioration of rent-controlled properties.
Fair net operating income