Reinstate Rental Control

I feel that rent control should be brought back into the state of Massachusetts. There is a wide range of residents that are renting and barely able to afford paying the high cost of rent that landlords are charge on a monthly basis. In this society, if you don’t have some kind of subsidy to help pay half of your rent, you need a job that pays at least twice what the cost of your rent would be each month just to get by. How do landlords expect one to be able to pay a high rent and keep your other expenses from not being in jeopardy like electricity, gas, phone, water, groceries, healthcare, and the like? Even worse, there are so many owners that are slumlords and expect to get paid when they don’t even keep up their end of the lease contract.

Too many people are in unstable living situations because of the difficulty of finding affordable housing. The government should be able to help anyone that is in need of affordable housing no matter what their situation would be. The requirement to even be qualified for affordable housing is ridiculous. I understand that their should be some kind of process; however, everyone needs somewhere to live. I believe that a solution to resolve this matter should be effective immediately: the government should pass a bill that implements rent control based on the criteria that landlords should not be able to charge no more than half of what your monthly salary is and take in consideration that you have other expenses to pay as well.

--RP