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{shortcode-69a9ed06c887cb075e6988b5c6d61980cc21c96c}any Cambridge residents know Denise A. Jillson, the executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, as the heart of the local economy.

“She’s got her finger in everything, and she just cares so passionately about the Square that when I need something, I call Denise,” Carol Lewis, the congregational administrator at First Parish in Cambridge, said.

But beyond her work at the HSBA, Jillson also has a deep history of political advocacy in the city. As former co-chair of the the Small Property Owners Association and chair of the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition, Jillson helped lead the charge to repeal rent control in Massachusetts during the 1994 state election.

Rent control, which was established in Cambridge during the 1970s, subjected more than a third of the city’s residential units to strict regulations on rent-price increases. Since the state referendum banning rent control narrowly passed, Cambridge’s housing stock increased by nearly $2 billion while residential turnover sharply increased.

John P. DiGiovanni, who worked with Jillson on the rent control repeal campaign, credited their success to Jillson’s dedication and leadership.

“I was really a soldier in her army, and she was the general,” he said.

‘We’re Not Alone in This’

Jillson said her interest in property ownership stems from her long family history in Cambridge.

“My family’s been in this area for generations, so the first family member that purchased property was here in Harvard Square in 1654,” Jillson said.

“Property ownership has always been in my DNA,” she added.

But it was not until 1986, when Jillson bought a rent controlled property with her husband, that she began advocating against rent control.

Jillson said that her experience as a landlord showed her the flaws of the rent control system. Despite the policy’s goal to help low-income individuals secure housing, Jillson said it inevitably caused landlords to “rent to the person with the highest credit rating.”

“So, if a single mom with three kids shows up to rent a unit, and a single person with a good job and no children, and is a young professional, who am I going to rent to?” Jillson said.

Frustrated by the policy, Jillson was spurred to action after seeing a flyer advocating against rent control — demonstrating that landlords were going through the same situation as her.

“I said to my husband, ‘We’re not alone in this. There are apparently other people that are having difficulty,’” she said.

Jillson then attended a meeting hosted by the Small Property Owners Association, an advocacy organization formed in opposition to rent control. After seeing how “fired up” other attendees were about the issue, Jillson decided to fully “jump in” to the world of advocacy.

When she became co-chair of SPOA in 1992, Jillson worked with an MIT economist to perform a demographic analysis of renters in Cambridge. The study found that 90 percent of renters were white, single, and college-educated, she said.

“That’s who it was, because we put them there. We did that because we had to pay our mortgage,” Jillson said. “The system doesn’t work, and it has the fundamental flaw, and that’s the part that was so upsetting.”

‘Brokered A Deal’

Two years into Jillson’s tenure as SPOA co-chair, she set her sights on the state elections, working as the chair of the Massachusetts Housing Coalition to get the repeal of rent control on the ballot.

For an initiative to qualify for the ballot, organizers needed to collect signatures from across the state equaling the amount of three percent of the total votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election. DiGiovanni said Jillson was the primary force responsible for securing these signatures.

“She was out in front of the room giving people and groups their assignments. She was the one keeping the trains on time. She had a whole map plan on how we were going to go and make this case to the people,” he said.

Jillson said her advocacy for rent control — combined with her full-time career and family life — was made possible by her partnership with her husband, George Pereira.

“There were no breaks, there were no holidays, there was no such thing as Thanksgiving,” Jillson said. “We were always, always, working.”

“I would get home from work, feed the kids, check their homework, George would take over, and I would take to the street,” she added.

The rent control repeal ballot initiative was ultimately successful, passing with a narrow 51 percent of the vote. But the policy battle did not end at the ballot box.

After the narrow win, municipalities – including Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline — filed home rule petitions in an attempt to extend rent control protections. State legislators approved the Cambridge petition, but ran into complications with anti-rent control governor William F. Weld ’66.

DiGiovanni said that Jillson stepped in to help resolve the complex situation.

“She brokered a deal with the legislature,” he said. “And legislature was unhappy, a good portion of them, and they had the majority — but they didn’t have enough to overturn a veto. So they needed the governor to agree.”

“He basically said to the legislature, ‘I’ll take my lead from Denise Jillson,” he added. “So that told them to get in a room and broker a deal with Denise.”

Jillson worked with legislators to expand rent-control protections for two years for certain income-eligible tenants — paving the way for its eventual abolition.

“Politics is about the art of compromise,” Jillson said.

“It can’t be all or nothing,” she added.

Now, as cities move to reinstate rent control protections across the state, Jillson has continued her advocacy against the protections. In 2019, she published an op-ed in Wicked Local titled “Rent control in Cambridge – why it didn’t work then and won’t work now.”

But others are not so sure. In 2023, the Cambridge City Council voted to support a bill from the state legislature that would repeal the ban on rent control.

Despite recent activism to reinstate rent control, Jillson stands by her work, saying that it helped pave the way for Cambridge’s current success.

“During the 70s and 80s and the early 90s, the city was really in very tough shape financially,” she said. “Then when rent control went away, as well as the advent of Kendall, with all the biotech, we now have a city.”

“Now, 20 years later, 30 years later, the city is in a remarkable, enviable financial situation,” she added.

—Staff writer Jaya N. Karamcheti can be reached at jaya.karamcheti@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Kevin Zhong can be reached at kevin.zhong@thecrimson.com.