“We Actually Have to Pass Things”: Christine Barber on Housing Pragmatism

Somerville State Representative and State Senate candidate

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Ben Orenstein: What would be your first order of business if you’re elected this fall?

Christine Barber: It’s a good question, because it is such an urgent moment where there are so many crises. I have many priorities, including protecting immigrants, making sure people are safe in our communities, addressing affordability. And I know your topic is housing. Housing is really the top one, and there’s so much unfinished on housing and so much to do.

But of course, with housing, there isn’t just one thing, so it’s challenging to pick one. But one thing that is really critical, and has obviously been through a lot of tumultuousness but also opportunity in the last year, is rent control. That is something that I’ve long been a cosponsor of and a big supporter of, and I would like to lead on it in the Senate. Senator Jehlen is the Senate sponsor of that. And given the support for rent control that came through the organizing of the ballot campaign, and organizing on legislation that’s been filed before: even though the question is off the ballot, we are in, I think, a very good place, and ready to take it to the next step and get to legislation that can stick on rent control.

Orenstein: What form do you think that would be? How far would you go? Is this a repeal of the ban so that communities could opt in, or would this be a mandatory thing statewide?

Barber: Definitely a repeal of the ban, because that is the main thing that’s stopping us. And then I want to continue to get people together to figure out what is the best way to move forward. I think we saw in the ballot question that there were a lot of concerns about how the ballot question was framed and drafted. I want to get more people together to make sure we’re getting the strongest language, but also the one that the most people can organize around, because we have to all work together if we’re going to win this. There are very powerful opponents to rent control, so we have to work together. We have to have the broadest possible coalition and be listening to people on the ground if we’re gonna win this.

I do not in any way think that I have all the answers, but I have worked with Homes for All, the advocacy work with the ballot question, the community development corporations, local organizations, and people who are renters, and I want to work to listen to the community and figure out the strongest bill that we possibly could. So that to me is really day one: getting people together so we can file something and win on that.

And I am a renter. I’m the only renter in this race. And to me, it is real. My rent just increased significantly, and I know what it’s like when you’re living year to year and wondering what is gonna happen to the unit that you live in, if you’re gonna have to move — people who have to decide where their kids are gonna go, if they’re gonna stay in school. This is a challenge that families are facing every day.

Orenstein: I think the original rent control ban is on the books because of negative results we saw with the first round of this in the state. So I’m curious: does that not apply anymore? Was that not a wise law in the first place? What’s changed?

Barber: I think the proposals that are out there now — rent control, rent stabilization — are getting rid of the ban, but also capping how much rents can go up. So I think any legislation that is going to stick is going to allow rent increases. No one is really arguing that rents are preserved in amber for the next hundred years. We know taxes go up. We want landlords to be investing in their properties and keeping them, of course, up to code, safe. And we know that that takes increases. The question is what percentage and how much? Because what we’ve seen in communities is sometimes rents doubling to push people out, or rents going up by 20%. No one’s wages go up by the amount that rents have gone up in the last number of years. And so it is a different way of looking at it than the rent control of the eighties, and it is also a very different time for housing. And I think that this is one of the most powerful tools we have to keep people from being displaced and pushed out of our communities.

Orenstein: Do you have any sense of the specifics around the shape of a rent stabilization or control that you would feel good supporting?

Barber: I have supported the local option bill for a number of years, and I think that has a lot of support: allowing communities to decide if they’re going to do rent control or not. I’m open to a conversation about different ways to do it, but that is the legislation that has been vetted and had a lot of support for the last number of years. That’s different than the ballot question. So I think we need to have a conversation about both what is the most impact, but also what can we get passed into law that provides the most relief to people as possible.

Orenstein: You were endorsed by the governor recently. Congrats on that. I believe the governor has come out against the ballot measure in the past. Why do you think you differ on this particular point?

Barber: I don’t wanna speak for the governor. I do know she came out in opposition to the ballot question, and she had concerns about production. I will say another piece of this that is different than previous rent control: there is a measure to exempt new production from rent control for the first number of years, knowing that we need more housing production too, in addition to not displacing people. So I’m open to conversations about the statewide ban versus local option, if there’s ways that we can get there and get broader support for this.

And I’m really honored to have the governor’s endorsement. We don’t agree on everything, and that’s true on many issues. She has moved things forward. We talked especially about signing the PROTECT Act yesterday, and I’ve worked with her on reproductive rights and some health care issues. So I’m really proud to have worked with her. And on rent control, I supported the ballot initiative strongly, and that was a place where we differed. It’s frankly really urgent in the communities that I represent as a House member and in the Senate district, and I think we can’t wait any longer.

Orenstein: If we did pass some sort of rent stabilization, and it looks like housing production declined, is there evidence that would persuade you, “Oh, actually, we gotta change this. This isn’t quite working as we hoped it would”?

Barber: One of the things that I like about local option is there are ways to adjust it as we go over time. So if we hit a recession, or we hit some really significant challenges that we don’t even know about yet, local communities would be able to adjust and make the best decision for them, which to me would not mean putting the ban back on the books at the state level. To me, that is going too far, and it should be up to at least the community to be able to make that decision. So this is just giving more options and more tools in the toolbox to help prevent displacement.

Orenstein: It seems like you’re leaning towards local power in terms of deciding things around housing policy. Is that generally true, or do you think there are places where the state should be making things happen statewide?

Barber: You mean outside of rent control?

Orenstein: Correct. Zoning, particularly.

Barber: On zoning, yes, of course. Zoning has historically been up to local communities, and we have an incredible housing crisis in part because the majority of local communities haven’t built any housing in the last twenty or thirty years. So I am one of the people who filed the MBTA Communities law when it was a bill, back in 2016 or ‘17 when I first came into the House. And when I would testify, I would talk about Somerville. And I would say: we live in a dense community with transit, and this is a way that a lot of people want to live. And Somerville is a very popular place to live. I’m not saying every community should look like Somerville or will look like Somerville, but the idea of building denser housing around transit is popular and is something that people are looking for at all ages. Right? You see people who are downsizing and they want to be in a community where they can walk.

So I believe in MBTA Communities as a way to push the communities that have not built any housing to start to move in that direction. We all know that’s been a fight over the last few years. And honestly, when I filed it, it was one of many things we were working on, and it never felt to me like this is the one thing that’s gonna fix everything. It is one thing that passed, and it is pushing communities to rezone in different ways. And we’re seeing some pushback, but we’re also seeing communities zone for housing that haven’t changed their zoning in decades. There is more to do to improve the law, to give it more teeth, to make sure communities are complying and actually building, so we’re not just zoning on paper. This is not an exercise in, “Oh, you zoned around the cemetery.” This is, how are you actually building? And that’s the next step where I also wanna go: what’s kind of the 2.0 of moving them forward. But that’s a place where the state had to step in and say, this is where we’re overriding local communities.

Another place was in the Affordable Homes Act, which is the big housing bill we passed two years ago (I’ve lost all sense of time; I think it was two years ago). I worked on the ADUs by-right provision. So accessory dwelling units, the mother-in-law apartments. There’s spotty rules about them all over the state, and that is, again, not a silver bullet (nothing is a silver bullet), but I was especially working with people with disabilities and seniors, as an option for families who may have an adult child with disabilities, or who have parents who are aging and want to live nearby. Accessory dwelling units was a good way to be able to sort of easily add new units and add housing in communities where we have a housing crisis. And that provision allows ADUs by right all over the state. It is overriding local zoning for that. Is it perfect? No. But it is a way that we’re seeing them come online, and I know we’re seeing a lot built here.

Orenstein: So if you were working on something like MBTA Communities 2.0, do you have any specific things you would do?

Barber: Yes. Making sure it has teeth. So making sure we’re being real about what money communities are not getting if they’re not compliant. Making sure that compliance is enforced.

Orenstein: By withholding funding.

Barber: By withholding funding, right. So that is how the bill is written. There’s obviously been pushback from the communities who don’t wanna comply. The state provides significant funding on environmental infrastructure, lots of different grant programs, and I would like communities to comply.

I would also like to make sure that, as I said, communities are actually building. So going from a zoning plan, which is obviously the first step, to an actual “how many homes are you developing, how many homes are in the pipeline” plan, and creating greater metrics too. And sometimes that’s technical support too, because some smaller communities may not have the planning board, the planners, working for their communities. Like we do in Somerville (we have a great staff), but not all communities have that, to provide technical assistance and help them get there.

And then the third is affordability. One problem — and I’ve actually filed legislation on this, but I would like to revisit it — is looking at not just building, but also with an eye towards affordability: what are we building, and how much of it is affordable in communities? Because building luxury housing is not going to get us out of the housing crisis. We need to be building housing that people can actually afford, and that, I think, is something that gets lost in the production discussion a lot. It’s both looking at displacement and tenant protections, like your rent control, but also looking at affordability and using whatever leverage we can when we’re building to make sure that it is affordable at different income levels.

Orenstein: Why do you think that a lot of the production is at the higher end of the luxury scale?

Barber: So it’s true that building is expensive. I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but it is expensive to build per unit. It costs a lot. That is one reason for protecting tenants and protecting units that are, like, rent control, where there already are units. If we’re building units and losing existing affordable units, we are never going to solve the housing crisis. We really need to do both. So it is expensive to build new housing. And it’s also mostly done by private developers, investors. So we need to be using whatever leverage we can to make sure that they’re building affordable. And we’ve had some success in that in my district.

Two examples. When we rebuilt the public housing at Clarendon Hill, the North Street apartments. That is the housing along Alewife Brook Parkway. Those buildings were built in the forties for veterans, had not really been updated, and were full of mold and holes and really beyond repair. And so the city and the state came together to rebuild all of those units, but also add more affordable housing units. It’s not been an easy project: cobbling together various funds to be able to do that and make sure that we have not just very affordable public housing, but also additional affordable housing units, and new units that are sanitary and will stand the test of time and are more appropriate for families to live in.

And then the other project is the old Star Market site, which we’ve worked on for way too many years. But that project — working with some developers who really came to the table with the city and were game for making sure that half of that project is affordable. And we were able to get state money to put towards that project too, and figure out how to work with the developer to build affordable units: not just building more housing, but making sure that it fits with the community.

Orenstein: I think a lot of our discussion so far has been focused around protecting people on the lower end of the income scale as prices go up, and housing in particular. The median income in Somerville is $130,000 a year, so as a city, we’re fairly affluent. And yet I think even median-income people are reporting, “This is getting hard to afford; I’m considering moving out of here.” How do we achieve broad affordability across the market, versus for people that win the literal lottery for a unit that’s been protected as affordable?

Barber: There’s two main ways. The first is: the people who are most at risk are people who are lower income, and so that is where I put my focus, because those are the people who are most at risk of being displaced and not having as many options of where to go. And if we can address that, we can address the larger problem too, including for people with very low incomes, and for people with sort of median incomes, and the workforce housing that we talk about, where they’re making a little less than median but they still are getting priced out of our communities. So that is my focus.

The other side of it is that this is not a Somerville housing crisis. This is a statewide and a regional housing crisis, and we cannot solve this on our own. And I think it’s remembering that even though so many people in Somerville are working hard on the housing crisis — and I love that, and I love that there’s a lot of energy in organizing — the pressures that are driving up the cost of housing are not just ours, here in this community or in Cambridge. They’re not just regional; they’re statewide. I hear that from my friends who represent Gateway Cities. And when we look at Gateway Cities, we say, “Oh, it looks so affordable there,” because we’re comparing it to Somerville prices. But for people who live there, and have much lower median earnings, they are looking at housing that costs $500,000 and saying that is completely out of reach for us. So it is about taking this on statewide, and really, again, making sure communities are doing their part to build housing, and being thoughtful about how we’re doing that. Because we didn’t get into this overnight, and it’s gonna take some time to get out.

Orenstein: So it sounds like you would probably (broadly at least, or in theory) be in support of statewide legislation to maybe do some upzoning, increase density, holding local communities to some sort of metric of production, vacancy, or median price, something like that. Is that right?

Barber: Yes. So both having more tools at the state level where we’re pushing communities, and supporting and incentivizing those communities to actually follow through and do that. Because I think this is a statewide crisis, and we need all the tools possible. So yes.

Orenstein: You’ve been representing Somerville for six terms now. Rent has gone up a fair amount in that time.

Barber: Yes.

Orenstein: Do you have any things you would look back on and concede “We didn’t catch this in time,” or “We should have done this earlier”?

Barber: It’s true, rent has gone up significantly—

Orenstein: Your rent and mine!

Barber: My rent and your rent. Right. Sure, I wish that hadn’t happened. I wish we had passed rent control or rent stabilization a number of years ago and come together around that in a different way. If we had passed the transfer fee — which is also something I’ve worked on for many years that we have not yet passed, which would add a small amount to transactions when houses are being bought or sold that are not owner-occupied — that would put a significant amount of money into affordable housing trusts. We want to build much more. We have not yet passed that. So, yes.

And the way I do this work — I think the most important thing to remember is that talking about the housing crisis doesn’t get us that far. We actually have to pass things. And so what I’ve been focused on is figuring out what we can get enough votes for, and getting that passed. So MBTA Communities, as I said, was never meant to be kind of the only thing we passed, but it is one thing that passed, and then it has taken up a lot of oxygen. Do I wish there’s a bunch of other things that we had passed that we could also be moving forward? Absolutely.

But after MBTA Communities, I got back to work and started working on the Affordable Homes Act, which was the large housing bill that we passed, and trying to get as much policy in there as we could. We really tried to get the transfer fee in there. There was a lot of opposition to that, and we didn’t win that. But we did get ADUs by right, and we got a lot of funding for affordable housing that has been going out the door. So it’s at every opportunity to kinda move things forward. And that’s why, working on tenant opportunity to purchase, or TOPA, I just got that in the economic development bill, which is a broad bill, and that was an opportunity to get housing in there. And we’re also trying to get changes for single-stair building, a few other things around the edges in there, that are all moving the ball forward. And I think that’s what we need to keep doing: figuring out how to organize, how to actually get the votes, and actually how to get things passed. That’s what I’ve been doing at the state level, and I also think there’s even more opportunity in the Senate, with having 40 people, and some people who are very like-minded, to be able to get things across the finish line and get those good ideas actually into law. We can always go back and say we wish we had done this, or we wish this had passed, but until we can actually organize, get the votes, get that through — that is what we need to do, and what I’ve been focused on.

Orenstein: Do you think we can get single-stair building codes done?

Barber: I hope so. There doesn’t seem to be as coordinated opposition, which hopefully will continue to be true as I’m saying that. So is that gonna solve everything? No. But it’s all of these things around the edges that we need to keep pushing, and then push for bigger things too, like rent control, and work together at every opportunity that we have to have these conversations, and to have these conversations with people outside of Somerville. Because, like I said, basically every community has a housing crisis, but they look different in different communities. So making sure on my end that I’m working with people in other communities to say: this is what’s going on in my community, but what about yours? How do we get there? I have some colleagues who do not want rent control in their community, and I still wanna understand that better: why, and what do you see in your community, and then is there a way we could get there? And so those conversations and relationships are really important.

Orenstein: A phrase you used is “results, not rhetoric.” At the end of your first Senate term, how should we judge your results? What would be good results to you?

Barber: I can’t promise exactly what will be passed, because there’s always a lot of magic to that: coalitions coming together, and how we can work on things, and also what crises come up. But I’m proud that in the legislature I have passed dozens of bills: on housing, yes, but also on health care, and immigration support, and support for kids with disabilities. And looking at the breadth of work, especially on affordability. Because, yes, housing affordability is a crisis, but we also need to talk about all the other affordability crises in everyone’s lives right now. So looking at health care, and how much premiums are going up and copays are going up, and continuing to push for significant changes in how we provide health care, and making sure that people can get the care they need. So looking more broadly.

So judge it in bills passed, money gotten for projects, and actual results. As I’m continuing to organize people in the State House, in the Senate, and working with people in the communities: what are we actually getting done? Because that to me is how I want people to judge my time as a state rep, and also to look at the work as a senator.