Why not just refuse to renew their leases?
In NYC I know of a reprehensible individual who lived in the city rent-free for almost 10 years. His strategy: move in, never pay rent and pay a lawyer 5% of two year's rent to fight his eviction for years.
It can take up to three years in NYC to evict a tenant for nonpayment of rent.
Not legal in many large cities, where the socialist city governments decided long ago that the easiest way to buy the votes of the poor and/or lazy was to confiscate the property rights of residential landlords.
I'm not sure what the current situation in Boston is, but for many years it was simply illegal to take ANY residential "rental unit" off the market. One family had converted the dining room of their single family home into an extra bedroom that they rented out. Then when one of the couple's had a parent die, leaving a surviving spouse who couldn't live alone, they figured that when their current renter's lease expired, they'd give it to the elderly parent. They figrued wrong. Busybodies activists sued, and the homeowners lost in the trial court. I don't know if the case was ever overturned on appeal.