Breaking: Donate Now to Fight New Threats to Property Owners in 2025!
Dear SPOA Members and Supporters:
Following our success in the previous legislative session, SPOA is at a crossroads and we need your support.
We begin another session at the Massachusetts State House, facing more bills hostile to property owners. Each session, these dangerous proposals invade further and further upon our property rights.
We all agree that there is an affordability problem. However, in trying to address it, some misguided legislators are endangering us and threatening our existing affordable housing stock with proposals curtailing our property rights, while making it harder for us to do our jobs as responsible property owners.
SPOA is a volunteer-based organization. Our board of directors, who create our content, are owners who give their valuable time to keep SPOA afloat as a landlord advocacy organization. It is vital to have financial support from everyone in our community to keep our important mission going.
As owners, we understand the current financial pressures faced by housing providers. Everything costs more — inflation has taken a great toll. Insurance premiums have shaken us, as we face increases from 15 percent to 40 percent — not to mention the fear of making claims should further coverage be denied or further skyrocket in cost.
Utility costs are also escalating significantly. However, as our legislators shrug their shoulders, utility providers have been tasked with funding the costly Mass Saves program through “delivery charges,” as this too is passed off to the consumer, as consumer outrage flares.
In the face of these challenges, SPOA has relentlessly advocated for property owners — and our efforts remain ever more critical since the assault on our rights escalated during the Covid pandemic.
We must have more support from fellow owners to further our efforts!
Therefore, we are asking you to make a donation to SPOA — one larger than the $100 annual dues. Please consider donating one of the following amounts:
$500
$800
$1,000
$2,000
$5,000
This is the only way we can improve upon the notable wins of the previous year, which proved that we are strong when we stick together. After all, where would we be today had we not resisted the extreme property tax increases proposed by Mayor Wu at the end of 2024?
Although the landscape may appear bleak, your contributions can change that landscape for the better. It is critical to not only continue, but enhance, your financial contributions so that all of our voices will be heard on Beacon Hill, as the radical activists redouble their efforts to pass devastating housing policies motivated by the politics of resentment!
This year, we will fight bills that will make it harder to screen potential tenants by limiting credit checks. Others will seek to regulate rents and make evictions even harder. And of course, we have plenty of new taxes, fees, and fines being proposed on landlords.
We don’t have a large budget, as we are running on a shoestring. We need to ensure that we have boots on the ground at the state house and that our content continues to reach the public.
Our future success depends on our ability to remain in the thick of the fight with our experienced lobbying team on the ground, helping us and our members attend countless meetings and hearings — communicating with our legislators to advance our cause.
As always, we have continued to update you about pending legislation through our regular email updates. In addition, we keep bringing you monthly newsletters and more episodes of our podcast, SPOA Housing Policy Series, in which we discuss important housing issues with a variety of panelists, including small property owners, attorneys, real estate experts and advocates, government officials, people running for office, and news media reporters. We also continue to give interviews and to have our own articles published in the media.
These efforts are challenging, and they should not be taken for granted. Clearly, our volunteers are dedicated. They provide quality work for free that would otherwise be expensive if outsourced to others. Moreover, our volunteers put in long hours away from their businesses and their families, fighting hard to protect the dignity of all our constituents, including people whom they have never even met. As they fight hard for you, they can’t succeed in their important work without your help and participation.
It’s time to increase our efforts and contributions since the previous year. Please donate today — and please bring new members with you!
Sincerely,
Allison Drescher
President, SPOA
Amir Shahsavari
Vice President, SPOA
P.S. Please remember to donate to SPOA today and to help us recruit more members. Please consider donating one of the following amounts:
$500
$800
$1,000
$2,000
$5,000
If you would like to volunteer, please contact Amir Shahsavari at askspoa@gmail.com to discuss further. Thank you again!
Also, if you donate $500 or more, you will be invited to a special in-person briefing about the 2025 legislative session. We plan to hold this event in Boston this spring and details will be released soon. This will be a good opportunity to meet in person and to coordinate our efforts further. Please donate now — our success depends on it!
by Allison Drescher and Amir Shahsavari
