TQNC Housing & Policy
Advocacy Group
Why is Housing Policy Advocacy a TQNC Focus?
From July through November 2023, TQNC held 5 Community Connection meetings in Downtown, Allston-Brighton, Jamaica Plain, East Boston, and Roslindale, tabled at Open Streets in Dorchester and East Boston, and conducted an online survey via our email list — and across all of those touch points, housing-related issues were voted 3 of the top 4 issues that members felt were in most dire need of action, specifically:
Supply: there's not enough housing, and it's hard to get more
Tenant rights education & communication
Support for renters: enforce MA sanitary code, and ensure landlords complete basic repairs & maintain pest-free homes
Given the consistency of the most urgent community-identified priorities being housing related, we formed our Housing Policy Advocacy Group.
Our Housing Policy Roundtable with Senator Lydia Edwards, Chair, MA Legislature’s Housing Committee
Upcoming Housing & Advocacy Group Meetings & Events
Our Platform
Housing is a human right, and achieving housing justice for all requires a wide breadth of policies across many areas.
To be effective in our advocacy efforts, we’re focusing on the top three most urgent priorities identified by TQNC member feedback:
1: Increase Housing Supply
Boston residents across all income levels and the entirety of the city are experiencing rapidly rising housing costs. The unaffordability of Boston housing has reached crisis levels.
Both rental and purchase prices are increasingly out of reach, and the development of new housing is not keeping pace with demand, nor is our aging housing stock being adequately maintained or replaced — not for market rate housing, not for income-restricted affordable housing, not for public housing. There is simply not enough housing, and there are too many barriers in the way of getting more.
While the lack of housing supply and high housing costs tremendously affect everyone, the queer community faces two additional specific impacts:
Safety for Our Queer Community
Discrimination and attacks against the queer community, particularly trans people and queer people of color, are increasing in many locales nationwide. While Boston has experienced a disturbing uptick in incidents, it remains a relatively safe city for queer residents, particularly from a legislative perspective. Our ability to afford to remain here — and our capacity to welcome other queer community members as residents in Boston — is vital to our ability to exist safely as our whole selves.
Explicit Queer Discrimination
Even in Boston, TQNC members report encountering overt housing discrimination from landlords and real estate agents on the basis of their queerness. Ensuring equal access to housing is especially necessary given Boston’s housing availability and affordability crisis.
2: Tenant Rights Education & Communication
While there are additional rights and protections needed, Boston has city-level and MA has state-level policies in place meant to ensure safe and stable housing for renters — yet most people don’t know their existing rights. We think the City of Boston can play a bigger role in educating renters.
There are also numerous housing programs and services that many people are unaware of. We believe communications and marketing are necessary components for the success of any public program, and see opportunities for improvement in both City and State programs.
3: Enforcement of MA Sanitary Code and Ensuring Landlords Complete Basic Repairs & Maintain Pest-Free Homes
MA law provides for Minimum Standards of Fitness for Human Habitation, also known as the Sanitary Code — but many tenants are unaware of these standards, accustomed to housing that fails to meet them despite high rents, or unsure how to get landlords to comply.
In MA, tenants have no right to counsel for housing court — hiring a lawyer requires paying out of pocket. There’s no equivalent to a public defender, providing legal services to those who can’t afford a lawyer. Alongside already astronomical housing costs, this places added financial burden on tenants facing unsafe or unsanitary housing conditions. We think this should change.
Additionally, while the City of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department is tasked in part with enforcing landlord compliance with code, the staffing and resources don’t begin to address the breadth of Boston’s housing. We believe the City of Boston should expand its inspectional and enforcement resources, and play a greater role in tenant rights education, particularly around apartment upkeep through basic maintenance and pest control.