In September, the Greenfield website added a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” about “possible future development of the city-owned parking lot” at 53 Hope St. — an issue city voters will decide at the Nov. 4 referendum.
City officials admit that what might be built on Hope Street “is not yet known.” The city believes “by building more market rate housing, Greenfield is growing its property tax base,” which “can help to control or reduce costs for residents throughout Greenfield.”
The city claims we must add as many as 1,000 new housing units by 2034, because “demand is for more housing from a shrinking population.” But there’s been a clear shift away from “affordable” housing to “market-rate” housing. The city now says “every market rate unit increases the total supply of housing which can help to lower costs overall.” Market rate housing is defined in our 2024 Housing Plan as “top of the market,” “commanding higher prices that may only be affordable to middle and higher-income households.”
A Greenfield city councilor recently wrote in a My Turn: “Adding to the tax base is one way that we can lower the tax burden on residents and lessen the housing crunch.” It’s not clear how adding market-rate condos is going to trickle down to renters but the housing proposed for Stone Farm, and 53 Hope St., are not “affordable” housing.
Forty-two percent of our housing units are rentals. Many renters need more help than market rate units they can never afford — like a $320,000 condo unit at Stone Farm. A simplistic supply and demand argument cannot predict what happens in the marketplace.
Housing activist Samuel Stein wrote in his book Capitol City: “I had believed that if we kept increasing our housing supply … that prices would go down. We built a tremendous amount of housing, including affordable housing, either through incentives or through government funds. And the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”
Greenfield activist Jessa Mae McCormack wrote in her My Turn column on Sept. 11 that “an intervention like rent stabilization stops displacement and keeps a roof over people’s heads.” If rental costs don’t come down when supply grows, renters may put more faith in the new rent control ballot question.
On Sept. 3, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced that she had approved a Rent Stabilization Initiative Petition, which will appear on the November 2026 ballot — if citizens gather 74,574 signatures by Dec. 3, 2025. The proposal will then be sent to the state Legislature in January 2026 for its consideration by the first Wednesday of May 2026. If the Legislature does not enact a proposal, supporters must gather 12,429 additional signatures by July 1, 2026, to place Rent Stabilization on the November 2026 ballot.
This proposed rent stabilization law would protect tenants by limiting the annual rent increase for residential units in Massachusetts to the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index for a 12-month period, or 5%, whichever is lower. The law would not apply to: units in owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units; units that are subject to regulation by a public authority; units rented to transient guests for periods of less than 14 days; units operated for educational, religious, or non-profit purposes; and units that received their residential certificate of occupancy within the last 10 years. The existing rent for a unit as of Jan. 31, 2026 would serve as the base rent for the annual rent increase limit.
The initiative petition will repeal Chapter 40P of the General laws, the Rent Control Prohibition Act, which established a uniform statewide policy that “broadly prohibits any regulatory scheme based upon or implementing rent control,” except if such a scheme is “voluntary and uncoerced on the part of property owners.” Current law says “the public is best served by free market rental rates for residential properties and by unrestricted home ownership.” “Rent control” is currently defined as “any regulation that in any way requires below-market rents for residential properties.” The only exemptions are for “publicly owned housing, publicly subsidized housing, federally assisted housing, or mobile homes.” The Greater Boston Real Estate Board has promised to fight this ballot question, which they claim is unconstitutional as a “uncompensated taking of private property.”
Greenfield renters may prefer direct action rather than waiting for “market rate” housing benefits to trickle down to them. Here’s a link to help collect signatures to repeal the Rent Control Prohibition Act.
Low- and moderate-income people need rent stabilization — not “top of the market” condos.
Al Norman’s Pushback columns are published in the Recorder the first and third Wednesdays of each month.