Massachusetts Senate has agreed to legislation aimed at preventing the continuation of so-called home equity theft. An amendment added to the fiscal 2025 budget would eliminate a municipality's ability to take a property owner's earned equity beyond what is owed in unpaid taxes and "reasonably incurred expenses."
While your complaint is valid in way too many places, you’re making it in a Massachusetts community where it’s just not.
I’d also like to point you to what could have a huge impact on new multi family housing across eastern MA, over time
We do have a huge housing affordability crisis here, but it’s not really the corporate investors. In general Massachusetts has a very high cost of living and decades of under building, too few housing units for needs. The residential exemption makes a difference to the extent local communities can, but it’s nowhere near enough. Encouraging development of more multi family housing (especially near transit) will make a bigger difference
Linking back to Boston, it’s not as clear since they talk about an amount of tax reduction, but I find it interesting there is a max discount of 90%. If there are houses that meet that criteria, a landlord would be taxed ten times what someone living there would