Anti-Rent Control Fever

It's spring, and politicians' thoughts turn to the elections five months away. Rent control has been a big part of every city election since its adoption in 1970, and a group a city landlords may have begun efforts in the last two weeks to make sure that this political season will be no exception.

They argue that rent control--which requires that the city approve any proposed rent increases--depresses property values, denies fair profits to landlords, decreases money for maintenance and subsidizes college students and young professionals at the expense of land-lords and taxpayers.

The landowners pressed legislators last week to pass two bills that would effectively end rent control, one by phasing it out over the course of a year, the other by ending rent control on individual apartments as their tenants left--called vacancy rent decontrol. "With a 50 per cent annual turnover rate, that is ending rent control," City Councilor and State Rep. Saundra Graham said at the state hearing.

Graham, one of a five-member council majority opposing the end of rent control, argues that allowing unlimited rents would drive out poor and elderly tenants, making Cambridge a city of wealthy professionals, and would inflate land values creating pressure for large-scale development.

"It took 50 years for the Irish to wrest control from the Yankees in this city. Now you're trying to hand it right back," Councilor Alfred E. Velucci told Richard Fraiman, head of a landlord organization.

Vellucci, the council's swing vote--who once filed a motion to institute vacancy decontrol--told a jeering crowd at the council hearing, "You're damn right I'm supporting rent control...If it's one thing I've got a reputation for, it's guts."

The council majority is lobbying for a state bill, introduced by Graham, that would tighten up rent control by ending the eviction of tenants for condominium conversion.

Under current Cambridge law, purchasers of individual units can evict tenants and then let the developers turn the apartments into condos. Graham's bill would close that loophole, which she says has allowed close to 2000 condominium conversions over the last few years. segment of the community was galvanized yesterday "most of Holcombe's grievances were well-founded."

Both sides face a showdown. City Councilor Mary Ellen Preusser, an opponent of rent control, says. "The challenge is to find some way to be fair to landlords and at the same time keep Cambridge a livable city." And, she might have added, to do it before election day