The campaign for the tenant right to purchase in Greater Boston

Abstract

In this client-based thesis project, I sought to pass a law in Massachusetts, and in the process, to generate knowledge about how regular people can engender progressive policy change. I worked with State Representative Denise Provost, local elected officials, and affordable housing practitioners to write legislation based on Washington D.C.'s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) for Massachusetts. While developing this legislation, I lobbied legislators, mobilized advocates, and organized a constituency to try to pass the bill at the state and local levels. Political interest groups representing property owners and the real estate industry opposed the bill and successfully prevented its passage in the Statehouse and in the City of Cambridge in this legislative session, although the campaign for a Somerville Home Rule Petition is ongoing. To better understand why the urban displacement crisis has not resulted in stronger legal protections for tenants, and to offer strategies for change, I analyze this campaign as an extended case study on the nature of power in state and local governance. I argue that Lukes' three dimensions of power are at work in this case: first, landlords and real estate interests have won all recent open political conflicts with tenants in Massachusetts, creating a path-dependence effect that reinforces the power imbalance; second, governance in Greater Boston represents a pro-development regime (Stone, Molotch), which has removed tenants' rights from the public agenda and reframed the affordable housing issue in terms of supply and demand; third, many tenants do not question their lack of rights as renters due to the ideological supremacy of private property rights. To overcome these obstacles to change, advocates for anti-displacement legislation should focus on developing tenant leadership by building organizations that create new sources of power.