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Rental registry

Updated September 21, 2026

What's happening

The rental registry ordinance has sat in the Legislative Matters Committee since Dec 11, 2025, and the Wilson administration has told the committee it is "not prepared to move forward on this ordinance and [is] not prepared to discuss it." Ward 2 Councilor JT Scott, who chairs the committee, said May 19 he would bring the item back in September whether or not the administration is ready, and might write the enabling ordinance himself. September is nearly gone: the registry was on neither the committee's Sept 8 nor its Sept 15 agenda, and Scott is leaving. He resigned on Sept 3, effective Dec 31, and his letter names "a rental property registry" first among the things he did not finish and will now pursue "outside of my role on the City Council," alongside enforcement of the vacant-properties and short-term-rental ordinances the Council passed in May 2019 and, he says, no administration ever funded (Three Council seats turn over). The committee's next meeting is Sept 29, with short-term rentals expected on the agenda.

The ordinance — formally the Rental Registry and Energy Disclosure Ordinance — would for the first time require Somerville landlords to register their rental units with the city; today only short-term rentals are registered. The administration's stated reason for the freeze is that it supports the policy but wanted the FY27 budget reorganization to settle which department would own and enforce it. The budget passed June 25; the department question has not been answered in public.

The story

A decade in the making

Scott told the committee May 19 the concept dates to the Curtatone administration. Ward 5 Councilor Naima Sait had been pushing for it, and when the outgoing Ballantyne administration finally submitted an ordinance just before leaving office, on Dec 11, 2025, Sait said: "I've been waiting for this for a long time. The last meeting we had was November 2024." The Council referred it to Legislative Matters.

Then the administration changed. Mayor Jake Wilson took office in January, and the registry did not resurface until spring. In his March budget-priorities memo Scott listed enforcement of the vacant-properties ordinance and the rental registry program as top asks; Ward 7 Councilor Emily Hardt's memo asked for short-term rental enforcement. On April 28 Scott previewed that the registry would come up in May.

The May 19 standoff

It did, briefly. Yasmine Raddassi, the administration's liaison to the Council, said the Wilson administration supports the policy but was not ready to discuss it until after the budget process determined which department would own and enforce the registry. Scott was blunt: the Council has passed ordinances before — vacant property, truck skirts, leaf blowers — that the executive never enforced, and he signaled he might draft broad enabling legislation regardless of executive readiness. At-large Councilor Kristen Strezo moved to leave the item in committee until August; Councilors Ben Ewen-Campen, Will Mbah, and Lance Davis backed Scott's urgency.

Scott reported the outcome to the full Council on May 28 in sharper terms: the administration "delivered the message that they are not prepared to move forward on this ordinance and are not prepared to discuss it." Then the line that frames the fight: "our job as a legislative body is to pass laws and it is the job of the executive to faithfully execute those laws."

Why the department question is real

The budget did reorganize the relevant departments. Housing, housing stability, planning, and economic development were folded into a renamed Strategy and Development department under Executive Director Tom Galligani, which absorbed three layoffs and eliminated two vacant positions. Inspectional Services — which runs the city's only existing registry, the $250-a-year short-term rental registration under Chapter 7, Article X — was advertising for a new Director of Inspectional Services in the City's Aug 21 newsletter. The practical effect: whichever office would inherit a citywide registry is either shrinking or leaderless, which is the administration's argument for waiting and the Council's argument that waiting has no end date.

The Council has kept pressure on the adjacent question. On Aug 27 it sent two items to the Housing, Community Development and Equity Committee: an order (26-1306) for ISD to report how many short-term rentals are registered, how many illegal ones were reported in 2025, and what enforcement followed, and a resolution (26-1307) to add a 311 category for reporting suspected illegal short-term rentals. Those are the same enforcement-capacity questions a full registry would raise at scale.

What the ordinance would actually require is known from its title only — a registry of rental units plus energy-use disclosure. Its text has not been discussed in an open meeting.

What's next

  • Sept 29 — Legislative Matters meets; Chair Scott previewed short-term rentals and civilian oversight for the agenda, not the registry.
  • Sept 30, 6 p.m. — the Housing, Community Development and Equity Committee meets with nine items, the likely venue for the Aug 27 short-term rental items (26-1306, 26-1307); the ISD report will show what enforcement capacity exists.
  • Dec 31 — Scott leaves the Council; a new Legislative Matters chair inherits the ordinance in January (Three Council seats turn over).
  • The thread resolves when either the administration names an owning department and returns to committee, or Scott files his own enabling ordinance. See tenant protections for the measures that did move and Wilson reorg for the department shuffle.