City Council incumbents against rent control amid displacement ‘epidemic’

Of the 15 candidates running for At-Large City Council, two Boston City Council incumbents, Michael Flahtery and Annissa Essaibi George, do not support rent control policies in their 2019 campaign.

Flaherty stated that he is waiting to see if the recent increase in linkage fees paid by housing developers will have any effect on housing costs in the city.

“I’m open to having a discussion”, Flahtery said in an interview after the forum. “But it’s not an easy solution, there are many moving parts and multiple legs of the school.

Discussion on rent control legislation dominated the Boston At-Large City Council Forum on economic mobility for communities of color in Roxbury on Thursday.

The candidates addressed the outcries against displacement of long-term Boston residents due to rising costs of living in the heart of Boston’s black community, alongside protections for undocumented immigrants and public housing proposals.

Flaherty said that, although he does not support rent control, he advocates for Boston’s communities of color through his role in the Community Preservation Coalition.

The Boston Community Preservation Act raised $41 million in 2018, according to Flaherty. Eighteen-million worth of CPA funds are dedicated to affordable housing development proposals.

Incumbent Annissa Essaibi George opposed rent control legislation because “it simply doesn’t work,'' according to George during the forum.

A small property owner, George states that rent control does too much damage to small landlords that use rent to subsidize their bills.

“We’re using the wrong measure to talk about affordable housing,'' George said. “The easiest thing to do is to start pushing down the Average Median Income in the city.”

According to 2017 neighborhood profile study by the Boston Planning and Development Research Division, the average median income in Roxbury is $25,937, nearly $40,000 below the Average Median Income in Downtown Boston.

While adjusting the Average Median Income would be proactive, residents being affected by the lack of affordable housing feel as if city politicians have been ignoring their pleas.

“People don’t care,” Cliffton Braithwait, a homeless Hyde Park resident, said. “If people like me don’t speak up, we’re always going to be at the end of the bus.”

Sylvia Brewer, Mattapan resident of 65 years, recounts when she was able to rent her first apartment in Boston under rent control legislation in 1972.

“We had rent protection so your rent wouldn’t increase,” Sylvia said in an interview. “Now I have to save month-to-month for things like soap and deodorant.”

George is not opposed to passing pieces of rent control legislation, like tenant protections, but she believes that the city should focus on looking at federal subsidies to develop more affordable units first.

Many forum attendees found rent control to be a pressing issue in the upcoming election, according to Michael Kane, a Boston resident of 50 years and heavily involved in municipal politics.

“In the city arena, standing up for rent control determines whether you’re a champion of the working-class and poor people or a lackey of the real estate industry,” Michael said. “There hasn’t been a majority to support rent control in decades.”

Despite their opposition to rent control legislation, Flaherty and George received 13.68 and 13.85-percent of primary votes behind incumbent Michelle Wu with 19.81-percent on September 24. The Boston At-large City Council elections will be held on November 5.