Local News A conference committee still has to reconcile two very different versions of the policy before it can reach Gov. Maura Healey's desk. A bill that would give renters the first chance to purchase their apartment building is closer to becoming law than ever, but key differences remain. (Matthew J Lee/Globe Staff)

A bill that would give tenants the first chance to buy their apartment building when it goes up for sale is closer to becoming law in Massachusetts than it has been in years. But a legislative conference committee still has to reconcile two very different versions of the policy before it can reach Gov. Maura Healey’s desk.

Known as the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA, the measure would let renters in multifamily buildings organize a tenant’s association to match an outside buyer’s offer and purchase the property themselves. Tenants can also hand off that right to a nonprofit, community land trust, or other affordable housing group, or decide not to pursue purchasing the building altogether. 

Both the House and Senate included versions of TOPA in their sweeping economic development bond bills this summer, and a six-member conference committee is now working to consider both provisions.

Supporters say the policy is urgently needed because Massachusetts is losing affordable housing faster than it can build it.

“We’re losing more affordable housing than we’re able to build right now, and we’re losing it to gentrification. We’re losing it to displacement,” Sen. Lydia Edwards, an East Boston Democrat and one of the Senate bill’s co-sponsors, said. “We need to plug in the holes. And TOPA is a way of plugging in the holes.” she added.

The policy targets what housing advocates call “naturally occurring affordable housing,” or NOAH for short. These apartment buildings rent for less not because of any government subsidy, but simply because of their age and condition. 

According to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s 2023 report “Homes for Profit,” that kind of housing makes up nearly half (46%) of all affordable housing in Massachusetts, and it’s disappearing quickly; Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies has found the state loses an average of 16,000 low-rent units a year.

Investors have increasingly targeted these buildings, advocates say. The MAPC report found that 21% of residential properties sold in Greater Boston between 2004 and 2018 were bought by investors, with apartment buildings having the highest “flip” rate (12%) of any property type.

Nathanael Shea, director of public policy at the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations and a member of the TOPA Coalition, described how a sale typically unfolds without any protections in place: A corporate speculator comes in, buys the property, “jacks up the rents or just plain kicks everybody out,” and renovates it or rebuilds it, often as luxury housing. The result does nothing to solve the state’s housing shortage, he argued.

“We have the same number of units, it’s just for wealthy people instead of working class people or struggling people,” he added.

Under TOPA, Shea explained, a landlord who decides to sell would have to notify tenants first. If and when the landlord receives an outside offer, tenants would then get a window of time to match it by either pooling their own resources, or by partnering with or assigning their rights to a non-profit or for-profit affordable housing developer (often called a “community development corporation, or CDC) that can help secure financing. Any building purchased this way would come with deed restrictions to ensure it legally remains affordable.

Crucially, advocates of TOPA emphasize, the law wouldn’t force landlords to sell for less than market value. 

“If your triple decker in East Boston is going to sell for $2 million, it will sell for $2 million either to your tenants or to a developer. They have to meet that price,” Sen. Edwards said.

Two chambers, two approaches

The House and Senate bills diverge on how to structure the policy. The House TOPA provision (amendment 71) in the economic bond bill creates a statewide “local option,” meaning any city or town could opt in to adopt TOPA. The Senate provision (amendment 12) instead creates a five-year pilot program limited to five communities, with regulations set by the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.

Jehlen, who sponsored the Senate amendment and has been working on advancing TOPA in Massachusetts for years, said the compressed timeline of budget negotiations forced a less detailed bill than she wanted. 

“We were under tremendous pressure to put out something that the chair would accept,” Jehlen said. “I think a pilot makes some sense … I certainly support local option so that anybody can get in. I continue to think that’s a good idea. We have to come to some kind of agreement,” she added.

Both Jehlen and the TOPA Coalition argue that, while a big step in the right direction, neither chamber’s bond bill amendments are actually the strongest version available.

That distinction belongs to a standalone bill — S.998 in the Senate (sponsored by Jehlen in 2025) and H.1544 in the House — which was refiled this session after years of revisions requested by the real estate industry and legislators, and was reported favorably out of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing.

In the standalone version, municipalities would be given the local option to opt-in or out of TOPA. If a landlord decides to sell their property, they must notify their tenant’s association and can list the property immediately. The tenant association or CDC will then have between 21 and 45 days after being notified to execute a purchase contract matching the offer the landlord received from a developer. If tenants choose not to partake in their purchase option, or do not meet the timeframe, the landlord can proceed with a sale to an outside buyer.

The House’s version and the standalone bill both include exemptions for small property owners, while the Senate version leaves exemptions and other regulations to be decided by the EOHLC. Family transfers, new construction, and market-rate luxury units would also be excluded under the coalition-backed, standalone version, Shea said.

The TOPA Coalition is eager for the conference committee to adopt that standalone version, or at least borrow its more detailed framework, rather than the House amendment, which is identical to a bill the Legislature passed in 2021 that then-Gov. Charlie Baker later vetoed.

Ann Jochnick, a housing attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and a member of the TOPA Coalition’s steering committee, said the standalone bill reflects years of collaboration and compromise, and is the farthest any TOPA legislation has gotten in the legislative process in the nearly ten years since it was first introduced in Massachusetts in 2017. 

“We just feel really happy and really grateful that both chambers of the House and the Senate passed a version of TOPA,” she said.

‘All we have to do is do half as well as D.C. has done’

Most advocates pointed to Washington, D.C. as the paradigm for TOPA in the nation. Washington has had a tenant right-to-purchase law since 1980, becoming the first in the country to do so. A study commissioned by the D.C. Council found the law has helped preserve or develop more than 16,000 units of affordable housing, Jochnick said.

Advocates point to that history to rebut fears that TOPA would freeze up the real estate market. Shea cited Census data showing D.C. added more than 53,000 housing units (about an 18% increase) between 2010 and 2020. 

“No state built at the rate that D.C. built during that decade, and D.C. has TOPA in place,” he said. Scaling that rate to Massachusetts’ roughly 3 million existing units, he argued, would translate to more than 500,000 new units over a decade — far beyond the state’s current goal of 222,000 units by 2035.

“All we have to do is do half as well as D.C. has done, and we will still beat our goal by more than 10 percent,” he added.

Edwards pushed back on a common argument among opponents of TOPA that the government has no business inserting itself into private property sales, noting Massachusetts has had similar right-of-first-refusal laws for condo conversions since 1983 and for manufactured housing since the 1990s. 

She also connected the policy to the state’s racial wealth gap, pointing out that homeownership — the primary source of generational wealth for most families — remains far more common among white residents than residents of color. 

“The government was involved in property through redlining, through housing discrimination … TOPA is an example of the government being involved to help,” she said.

Shea also argued that without a formal process like TOPA, disputed building sales often end up costly and contentious anyway, playing out over months or years of tenant organizing, legal fights, and, eventually, a nonprofit or public agency might buy the building regardless, usually at a higher price. 

“There’s displacement even during that,” he said. “[TOPA] does not require anybody to do anything … but what it does is it establishes a framework so that the process can be smooth and transparent and easy for everyone.”

What happens next

Rep. Michael Soter, a Republican member of the conference committee, said negotiations are ongoing on the TOPA provisions, but declined to predict a timeline, deferring to committee chair Rep. Aaron Michlewitz instead.

Rep. Michelwitz did not return Boston.com’s request for comment.

“TOPA is a complicated thing,” Soter said. “It does take a while for something as complex as TOPA to be transformed into something that is acceptable by both sides,” he added.

Jehlen said she has requested a meeting with the committee’s chair and remains cautiously optimistic that some version will emerge from the committee, though she acknowledged that uncertainty remains. 

“You worry. If you don’t worry, you’re not going to do anything,” she said. Asked when she expects a decision, she offered a guess: “Sometime before January 5.”

For now, advocates say they’re hopeful for a TOPA policy to come out of the conference committee.

“We just want to see the strongest and most effective version of TOPA passed,” Jochnick, the housing attorney, said.