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As the cost of living in Massachusetts has risen dramatically for many residents, the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) has been campaigning to put rent control — which was abolished decades ago in the state — on the ballot in November of 2026. That effort, which has deadline of this Nov.19, is just one initiative the Dorchester-based nonprofit has been supporting to help Asian Americans in the Greater Boston area.
Volunteers from Dorchester are gathering signatures at grocery stores, MBTA stops, and community centers in an effort to get a rent-control measure on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot that, if approved, would limit rent increases for most residential units to five percent a year, or the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower.
The bill would exempt owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units and properties less than 10 years old. It would also repeal the 1994 law that outlawed rent control statewide, ended programs in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, and barred new ones.
Organizers have until Nov. 19 to collect the 74,574 signatures needed to put the petition on next year’s ballot.
In early September, the Department of Homeland Security launched Patriot 2.0, a mass enforcement initiative that has already escalated arrests of immigrants across Boston and Massachusetts.
In our neighborhoods, families have been torn apart, workers have been detained at their workplaces, and entire communities are living in fear. These are deliberate acts of state violence, designed to displace immigrant families from their homes, neighborhoods, and livelihoods.
BOSTON, MA – Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) denounces and resists the Department of Homeland Security’s “Patriot 2.0” enforcement initiative, which has escalated mass arrests of immigrants in Boston and across Massachusetts. These arrests are deliberate acts of state violence designed to displace immigrant families and workers from their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, leaving entire communities destabilized and living in fear.
By Leah Willingham, Michael Casey and Holly Ramer | Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) — Immigrants are being detained while going to work, outside courthouses, and at store parking lots in Metro Boston as President Donald Trump targets so-called sanctuary cities in his effort to ramp up immigration enforcement.
A father self-deports before dawn. A retired postman helps a teenager he barely knows muddle through an immigration court proceeding. A community activist — to some, a modern-day Paul Revere — drives from city to city, making herself hoarse to warn her neighbors: ICE is coming! ICE is on its way!