TOPA Victory!
We are so excited to share that TOPA-Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act- has passed at the State House!
The TOPA Coalition has been working long and hard on this initiative, including lobby days, public hearings and meetings, and hundreds of letters and phone calls from supporters like you urging the Legislature to pass TOPA this year. This legislation will give cities and towns an important tool to promote housing stabilization. TOPA prevents displacement by giving tenants an option to organize to purchase their home, with the option to work with an organization like a CDC or CLT, when the owner of a rental property decides to sell. This legislation can help preserve hundreds of units of affordable housing in Massachusetts. This is great news for tenants across the state! It's also a promising opportunity for potential future residents of the Land Trust. There are still more steps to take, including submitting a revised version of final bill, getting Governor Baker's signature, and begin to work with our cities to implement local regulations. This is an essential victory, and we are so pleased to move this forward at the top of the new year. Check out this Boston Globe article about the final hours of the legislative session when TOPA was passed.
To ensure that TOPA is signed into law, please take the time to contact Governor Baker and encourage him to take the final step and sign.
In other housing related news, H4115 Linkage IDP Home Rule petition passed in the late hours. This will allow Boston to update the Linkage program, increase pay-out substantially and decrease the threshold, therefore raising millions more for Linkage. It also codifies the IDP program, currently an Executive Order. IDP will be put into the zoning code thereby strengthening it and especially key as City rezones. It also places IDP on stronger legal ground! View this fact sheet for more info. You can also go to the CTAB (Coalition for a Truly Affordable Boston) website for more info about the State effort and the City campaign
BNCLT has and will benefit greatly from this legislation! These are crucial victories for our land trust to expand and add new properties and prevent displacement in our neighborhood. Our next steps are to craft a new bill to improve on it and get resources allocated to TOPA. We will now start working with and educating municipalities to adopt TOPA, and to craft local regulations.
Congratulations and thanks to all of you who helped make this happen! Thank you all for being part of this journey over the years. Your hard work has paid off!