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As a regional housing crisis grinds on in the wider Boston area, Harvard students are mobilizing in an effort to bring back rent control to Massachusetts — three decades after a contentious referendum banned the policy statewide.
That 1994 ballot initiative, which mandated that all future efforts to implement rent control be approved by the state legislature, came in part due to the policy’s perceived failures in Cambridge, where critics circulated sensational stories of Harvard professors and even the city’s mayor living in rent-controlled units.
In recent years, multiple cities surrounding Cambridge — including Boston, Brookline, and Somerville, but not Cambridge itself — have sent petitions to the Massachusetts state legislature for permission to implement local rent stabilization measures. Though the measures were politically popular in each city, none has been passed.
Now, Harvard students are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would implement the policy statewide. The initiative would tie annual rent increases in residential units across the state to cost of living increases, with an annual 5 percent cap. The measure exempts owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units, as well as new buildings for the first 10 years after construction.
The ballot initiative is spearheaded by Homes for All Massachusetts, a statewide coalition of 12 grassroots housing justice groups. The coalition of community organizations currently works with the Harvard Law School canvassing group Project No One Leaves, a student-run advocacy organization for tenants’ rights.
Project No One Leaves organized an event to train students on how to collect signatures in favor of the ballot initiative, and invited students associated with the Phillips Brooks House Association to attend.
The coalition has until mid-November to collect almost 75,000 signatures for the initiative in order for it to reach the ballot in next year’s state elections. It’s no small feat, but organizer Melanie Garcia ’27 said it’s “really, really worth it.”
“Even if you don’t really agree with the rent control, just being able to have the option to vote for it is really important,” Garcia said.
Garcia, who serves as PBHA Program Group Officer for Advocacy, Health, and Housing, was a successful recruit from an earlier training session at the law school before setting up the more recent session at PBHA.
Along with Minerva C. Garcia ’26 — PBHA Community Organizing Chair and director for the Housing Opportunities Program — she organized a training for undergraduate students last week and plans to organize group outings to collect signatures in favor of the ballot.
“Melanie and Minerva are very energetic about housing justice and have been great partners in a number of things,” Mary Enloe, who organized the law school training, said of the PBHA session’s organizers.
Melanie Garcia, who said she grew up in a Chicago neighborhood that is now gentrified, said affordable housing has always been an important issue to her.
“Seeing the same things going on here in Cambridge, in the Boston area, and all over Massachusetts, — I mean, I have a personal connection to it,” Garcia said, emphasizing that the initiative effort was a way “to use the privilege that I have being a student at Harvard to support communities like mine in the Boston area.”
Support for rent control initiatives has been a rising issue since the 2000s, due to increasing concerns over housing affordability in Boston, which has one of the highest average rents in the country.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ’07 ran her first mayoral campaign on a platform of implementing rent control, and easily passed such a measure through the Boston City Council upon taking office. But the state legislature never gave final approval to the measure, as state law currently requires — despite overwhelming support from voters statewide.
Most recently, the Boston City Council members briefly debated a resolution this week that would express their support for the 2026 ballot measure, but two councilors’ objections caused the resolution to be referred to a committee for a future hearing.
In the meantime, students are noticing the crisis, Minerva Garcia said — and stepping up to help.
“I feel like I’ve seen the rise in attention and interest in the housing crisis, specifically in Boston too, from students from my classes, from the people who show up to events, to people who are involved in the shelters,” Garcia said.
—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.
—Staff writer Frances Y. Yong can be reached at frances.yong@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @frances_yong_.
