Massachusetts Court Throws Out Rent Control as Boston Rents Stay Among the Nation's Highest

Massachusetts renters hoping for a cap on rising rents will keep waiting. The state's Supreme Judicial Court last month threw out a ballot question that would have installed rent control across Massachusetts for the first time since the 1990s, the Boston Globe reported.

The measure would have limited annual rent increases in most apartment buildings statewide to the pace of inflation. It had gathered enough support to bring major real estate groups to the negotiating table, and it polled well: in a November 2025 Boston Globe and Suffolk University poll, more than 62% of Massachusetts voters said they would back a policy capping annual increases at 5%.

For renters like Michelle Harrison, a 33-year-old in Norwood who recently lost her job, the stakes are personal. Her rent is up $1,000 from when she moved in six years ago, she told the Globe, calling it unsustainable and saying rent control could stop it.

Some of the highest rents in the country

The frustration tracks the numbers. Greater Boston has climbed into the top tier of expensive US housing markets. The rental site Zumper pegged Boston's median one-bedroom at $2,950 in June, ranking it the third most expensive rental market in the country behind New York and San Francisco, according to the Globe. RentDataNow's all-unit data tells the same story from a different angle: the median rent is about $3,454 in Boston, and even higher in neighboring Somerville at about $3,635 and Cambridge at about $3,621. Boston rent is up roughly 34% over the past five years.

Homeownership is even further out of reach, with the median single-family home in Greater Boston selling for more than $1 million in April, per the Greater Boston Association of Realtors. That leaves most residents renting, and paying dearly for it.

A cost-burden crisis

About 250,000 Massachusetts renters, nearly half of all renters in the state, are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing, the Globe reported. The strain shows up everywhere. A Boston Public Schools teacher told the paper that students change schools mid-year when their families get priced out. A union leader said some members' rent and child-care costs approach their entire monthly income.

For a paralegal in Plymouth earning just under $60,000 who pays $2,550 for a one-bedroom, the math already means living paycheck to paycheck, he told the Globe. Anyone weighing whether their rent is sustainable can run the standard test in our guide to how much of your income should go to rent or see where Boston lands among the most rent-burdened cities.

The economics fight

Rent control remains contentious. Economists and real estate developers argue that caps slow new construction by cutting profits and can let existing housing deteriorate, part of the case that led Massachusetts voters to ban rent control in 1994. Nearly everyone agrees the deeper problem is a housing shortage, and that the durable fix is building far more homes.

Supporters counter that Massachusetts already builds at one of the lowest rates in the nation, with or without rent control, and that renters cannot keep waiting for supply to catch up. With the ballot question tossed, the question of how to slow rents in one of the country's priciest states is unresolved. Renters comparing their options can weigh two markets side by side with the RentDataNow compare tool or test a budget with the affordability calculator.

Sources

Reporting, quotes, and the Zumper, Suffolk poll, and Realtors figures: The Boston Globe, Rent up $1,000 in 6 months (July 2026). Rent figures: RentDataNow, June 2026, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index.