The City Council Will Meet Today On Rent Control

At its first public meeting in two weeks, the City Council may tonight decide, once and for all, the fate of the Cambridge Housing Convention's bill for rent control in the city.

Although the City Council had originally planned to meet last night and reconsider last month's defeat of the rent control proposal, the meeting was postponed until today because of the Apollo 11 holiday.

Meeting Privately

The Council has been meeting privately on the City's housing crisis for the last two weeks; last week, the councillors agreed to take another look at the rent control proposal.

The housing convention, a citizens group formed last fall to ask for low income housing in Cambridge, has continued its vigil on the City Hall steps throughout last week and into this week. From the vigil have come continued calls for passage of the rent control ordinance, and defeat of a rent grievance board (or stabilization) board proposed by the City Manager.

Hits Rent Grievance

At a convention last Saturday, Herbert Goodwin, a Brookline attorney and town meeting member, said that a rent grievance board, which can only investigate individual cases of rent rollbacks would be successful.

"You cannot deal with a city-wide problem on an individual case-by-case basis. It is absolutely impossible for the board to initiate complaints in the hundreds of instance of major rent increases," he said.