Let’s join our partners from Homes for All MA to Help pass TOPA – the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act – an important tool for tenants, community groups, and allies to fight displacement and preserve and create long term affordable housing. The Housing Committee hearing is TODAY!
1) Email your legislators using this tool and get it out to your members. You can just click and send the message, or add your own words.
2) Participate in the TOPA “Twitter storm” today (Tuesday, October 12) from 10 – 11 am. Sample tweets, accounts to tag, and hashtags are here (and copied below).
3) Submit written testimony about why TOPA is important by this Friday, October 15th and help your members tell their stories in written testimony as well. Email testimony and support letters to all of the following (Housing Committee staff and co-chairs): Morgan.Simko@masenate.gov, luke.oroark@mahouse.gov, james.arciero@mahouse.gov, john.keenan@masenate.gov
4) Help community members take selfies or do short recorded videos about their support for TOPA and post them on Facebook or Twitter, tagging their legislators and the Housing cochairs (on twitter: @SenJohnFKeenan and @RepArciero ). Hashtags: #Time4TOPA #Right2Purchase #Right2Remain. Please also email these to Jason at Desrosier@allstonbrightoncdc.org .
More info on TOPA: check out the TOPA coalition website.
Tweet Storm instructions:
- Hop on your Twitter accounts on Tuesday, October 12th and join the TOPA Coalition’s tweetstorm from 10am – 11am. Post throughout the hour about the need for TOPA.
- Elevate the conversation by liking and sharing/retweeting posts from other participants. The goal is to raise our collective voice about the importance of housing affordability and preservation, and the critical need of these crucial tenant protections across the state.
- We will be using #Right2Purchse and #Time4TOPA to drive our campaign.
- Some sample tweets:
A just recovery includes tenant ownership & permanent affordability #Right2Purchase #Time4TOPA
Help us keep tenants in their homes! #Time4TOPA #Right2Purchase
With #Right2Purchase H.1426/S.890 MA tenants could stay in their homes for good. #TimeforTOPA
We need to make sure corporate real estate investors and landlords don’t take advantage of the #COVID19 crisis like they did in the last Great Recession. Support H.1426/S.890 and MA tenants’ right to stable housing.
More resources for the tweetstorm in this document (tweet ideas, hashtags, legislative endorsers, and organizational partners).
