Condo: It's a Fighting Word

Condominium has been a fighting word in Cambridge for years now, ever since the nationwide condo boom hit this crowded city. Developers, property-owners and some of the city's conservative leaders place condos on a par with apple pie and ice cream. Condo opponents, who include a five-member majority of the City Council, mention the converted apartments in a tone Cambridge usually reserves for incest and the New York Yankees.

For the moment, the opponents are in clover. After years of trying, they finally maneuvered an ordinance through the City Council that will force developers to obtain special permits before they can renovate apartment units and sell them.

The specific regulations the rent control board will use to implement that ordinance are still being drafted, but they will enable tenants faced with eviction to argue that Cambridge's housing emergency--the acute shortage of rental housing in the city--and hardship--age, income level, length of stay in the apartment and in Cambridge, and ability to find a new home--should be considered before they are evicted.

"It's just my guess, but I would say that under this bill there will be more permits denied than granted," James Remeika '68, assistant director of the Rent Control Board said last week. "It's certainly not going to be easy. if someone is 80 years old and has lived in an apartment for 45 years, and in Cambridge all his life, then there is a pretty good chance the board will find it to be a hardship case and not allow the conversion," Remeika added.

The permit system, which governs renovation, and not the buying and selling of units, is an effort to avoid the legal obstacles that have hampered past attempts to prevent the spread of condominiums. Court challenges have already started for the new ordinance, though, and some condo developers predict the new rent control regulations will be outlawed before they're ever approved.

We've only been in court once so far, and there district Judge Shermant old us he thought the city council had exceeded its authority," William J. Walsh, an attorney for Harlow Properties, one of the city's largest condominium developers, said. "He refused to hear the case at that time, saying that we didn't have standing, but he urged my client to go ahead and pass papers on and that if a permit is denied to bring the case back."

Another suit, filed last week by ten Cambridge taxpayers, also challenges the council action. "Aggrieved taxpayers have automatic standing in these matters," Walsh said. His foes, though, are not defenseless. City council candidate David Sullivan, who drafted the original ordinance, also drafted a 28 page brief outlining its constitutionality. Sullivan confesses that his defense is not ironclad, "I am confident, though, and I doubt very much if any court will grant an injunction against it."

While the legal battles meander through the courts, condominium conversion may be continuing. "At some places, they (developers) have lost their rehabilitation loans, but in other areas it hasn't changed the pace of conversions," Lawrence A. Frisoli, a city councilor who voted in favor of condo conversions, said last week. Frisoli's claims are wishful thinking, responds Sullivan. "I haven't heard of a single condo being occupied. When the law is broken, I assume the person will be prosecuted and end up with a $500 fine and a criminal record for the rest of his or her life," Sullivan said, adding, "The bill has dried up the market. Anyone buying up a unit with the hope of ever occupying it is in real trouble."

Condo conversion has a history and a future as a political issue. Five years ago, condos were rare in Cambridge, as they were in much of the country. Soaring home prices and the desire of landlords to be free of rent control helped spur the condo boom in Cambridge, a wave of conversions that shrunk the number of apartments in the city by 2000 in the past three years. "Condo conversion has really affected Harvard--it has cut the housing stock at a period when demand, especially from transient students, is increasing all the time," Sally Zeckhauser, president of Harvard Real Estate, Inc. said.

The other problem with condos, the one most often cited by its critics, is that many tenants forced from their homes by condominium conversion cannot afford to buy the new units. Instead, critics contend, they are forced onto public housing rolls or they have no recourse but to leave Cambridge in search of more inexpensive quarters. "The elderly are the ones that suffer the most," city councilor Alfred E. Vellucci says.

Condo enthusiasts answer those arguments with claims of their own. "60 to 80 percent of condos are sold to the tenants who lived in the apartment that was converted," Walsh contends. "Buying those units is a stabilizing factor for them--there is no better rent control than a mortgage," he added. The "homeless elderly" problem will be solved soon too, Frisoli says. "There are two bills in the state legislature to protect the elderly from condo conversions. That seems to be the sore point, and it will be long gone by election day," he said.

Walsh can run down a laundry list of pro-condo arguments. "It gives people interest in the city as taxpayers, it increases the amount of revenue to the city, it improves the property, and last but not at all least, it lets everyone experience the pride of ownership which is a basic American right," Walsh says. "Condos open new gates for people coming in, and since so many old tenants buy them, the price has to be damn right."

Many Cantabrigians accept Walsh's arguments. Many others, especially those who are tenants and not landlords, fear the spread of condos so much that they are making it the biggest issue in this fall's municipal election. "Contrast it with what's been happening in Boston where Mayor (Kevin) White has been able to quiet it all down," Sullivan said. "Condos and rent control are the kinds of issues that are important to focus on," he continues, "because they allow us to get at the contradictions in voting for the independent candidates." The independent city councilors are often lined up against the Cambridge Civic Association slate of reform progressives which disapproves of condos and favors rent control. "Politically, it's a very good issue for the progressives, although the crisis that makes it an issue is obviously awful," Sullivan said, adding, "I've been canvassing for months, and for tenants, it is the only issues."

Another bloc the progressives hope to lure to the polls with the condo issue is students, who, since they are transient by nature, might oppose conversion of rental units. That job may be difficult: in the last municipal election, where housing was also an issue, the predominantly-student third precinct of the sixth ward turned out only 349 of 1462 registered voters. Ballot referenda on South Africa, nuclear power and the Kennedy candidacy may draw more students to the ballot box this year, but the issues are no guarantee. "Based on their past experience, many politicians in this city tend to take the student vote pretty lightly," one city council candidate said last week.

Other campaign issues include city administration and what Frisoli calls the "liberal clique that has allowed this city to stagnate for ten years." But condo conversion and rent control will be among the deciding factors in the campaign. "There are more tenants than landlords in this city. We have always welcomed a vote on this, and we have done our best to make it an issue," Sullivan says.

One year's election results and probably one new ordinance will not end this battle over condos. Like the yearly duels between the Red Sox and the Yankees, there will be a series of small victories and defeats, never totally won, and never ultimately lost.