SOMERVILLE– Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and the City of Somerville’s Office of Sustainability and Environment (OSE) invite you to a virtual community meeting to learn more about a proposed Rental
Registry and Energy Disclosure ordinance designed to improve rental unit energy efficiency, affordability, and healthiness, as well as advance the City’s climate action and affordable housing efforts.
Meeting Details
When: Wednesday, November 20, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Where: Online via Zoom
How to Join: Register for the meeting here or go to somervillema.gov/rred
Attendees will get updates on the proposed ordinance, the community feedback process and the feedback received, discuss the preliminary implementation plan, and have opportunities to ask questions and give additional feedback. Once finalized, the proposed ordinance will be submitted to City Council for approval.
For questions about this initiative, please contact Garrett Anderson at ganderson@somervillema.gov and 857-270-4403.
About the Rental Registry and Energy Disclosure
Roughly two-thirds of Somerville residents are renters, and the City of Somerville is determined to improve their access to the energy savings and health benefits of green energy upgrades often out of reach to renters–especially low-income renters.
The proposed ordinance will strengthen two-way communication between landlords and the city, while improving landlord access to energy efficiency and weatherization resources. In passing this ordinance, Somerville would be joining more than 60% of US cities in creating a rental registry. The energy disclosure component would be the first of its kind in Massachusetts, and increase awareness about energy efficiency in rental units.
It is more Democratic progressive bullshit. Government interfering with private business between property owners and their tenants.
You treat property owners like a credit card waste money and raise all the fees, taxes, water sewer and more. It is time to vote them out in the municipal election.
Actually, the initiative is more business and industry oriented than “Democratic progressive”. Having left itself to the full enjoyment of unmolested capitalism’s forces, Greater Boston’s real estate, and Somerville’s generally more so, is old, run down, and more similar to hovel-inspired than anything Anonymous could be proud to live in no less host guests gathering. No where else is the condition of dwellings so expensive for such poorly constructed buildings. No fault of the trades, the average age of buildings here is ancient compared to everywhere else. Most houses were in sad need of a facelift a generation ago. So the work to be done — the make-up-for-past-miserly-decisions — is simply for owners to take pride in the quality of what they own and invest in improving it where it stands. That is good for business, because Greater Boston’s owners stopped doing their own work on their own properties back around the time the buildings standing everywhere today were first erected. That work isn’t government’s work, it is the heretofore avoided work that comes with of owning property.