Why we Need TOPA Now

The TOPA enabling act is critical now to address COVID-related housing speculation.
  • The pandemic is causing increasing distress in the housing market and is expected to result in more turmoil, speculative purchases and resident displacement. 
  • Already billion-dollar investment funds have been set up for distressed properties.
  • Cities and towns desperately need tools as the housing crisis worsens.   
  • TOPA provides tenants the opportunities to be homeowners and build family assets through homeownership.
TOPA is essential during the pandemic to help tenants keep their homes.
  • Housing stabilization now is a public health issue.  TOPA would help prevent the displacement of vulnerable tenants.
TOPA would help blunt deepening inequities.
  • Race is the strongest predictor of eviction in Boston, over and above indicators of poverty. Seven out of ten (70%) of Boston’s first-year pandemic eviction filings occurred in census tracts where the majority of renters are people of color.
  • Displacement and unaffordable rents disproportionately impact people of color, seniors, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups -- and increase segregation in our communities.
  • TOPA would help to avert speculation of 2008 when huge amounts of wealth were lost by communities of color and working class families.
  • For an in-depth perspective, read the article "Stable Housing is a Key Tool for Economic Stability" — Boston Globe article by Ayanna Pressley, Lydia Lowe, and Denise Matthews-Turner

Racial equity and market forces
Hot property markets have caused disproportionate harm to people and households of color. Displacement following property sales have particularly impacted Boston’s minority neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan and East Boston. Massachusetts’ five majority minority cities – Lawrence, Lynn, Chelsea, Springfield, and Brockton –are included in our property sales and census reviews. Census data shows:
  • 56% of the combined population of these communities are renters
  • In 3 of the 5 cities, the number of occupied rental units declined between 2014 and 2019
  • In all five cities more than 40 % of the renter population was rent burdened (paying more than 35 percent of income) in both 2014 and 2019
  • In four of the five cities the percent of rent burdened households increased between 2014 and 2019
  • In one city with 11 percent of all renters in the majority minority cities, median rents rose faster than median income between 2014 and 2019
TOPAcoalition@mlri.org