City Tenants' Union Holds First Meeting

Cambridge tenant activists gathered Sunday afternoon to found a new grassroots organization that will replace the Cambridge Rent Control Coalition (CRCC) with a unified body they said could act more effectively in pursuit of common goals.

"There's no question but that we should go back to what were the original strong points of the tenant organizations in the 1960s--and that is organizing tenants," said Joel Johnson, a leader in forming the new Cambridge Tenants Union (CTU).

Organizer Bill Cavellini called for tactics that would join rent strikes and picketing with more traditional political lobbying. "A legislative strategy is as effective as a group's ability to back it up--either with votes or with their ability to disrupt the system," he told the audience of 100.

Tenants who attended the meeting adopted bylaws that take effect in February. The group will elect officers then, and the founders will run the organization unofficially for the intervening three months.

Johnson said the defunct coalition's constituent groups had been too devoted to legalistic means and diverse ends. Several speakers at Sunday's meeting warned against "getting lost in the paperwork and mechanics" and "splitting hairs."

Both he and fellow-organizer Neil Rohr commented that the founding meeting had included "a lot of new faces"--those of tenants who did not belong to existing organizations.

The Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), a civic watchdog group with four members on the City Council support rent control, has not endorsed the CTU and is not a member of the Coalition.

CCA President Jack Martinelli, Executive Director Jim Marzilli, and CCA City Councilor David E. Sullivan were all present at Sunday's meeting.

Cambridge became one of the first municipalities to adopt rent control in 1970, when inflation and rising property values led tenants' groups to lobby for the policy. The City Rent Control Board sets rents for 17,000 Cambridge housing units, using a formula that accounts for operating expenses and what it considers a reasonable profit for the landlord.

Two issues that the CTU will face are a proposal by City Councilor William H. Walsh that would phase out much of rent control and proposed rent increases on Class D properties--those units which the Cambridge Rent Control Board does not restrict tightly because of a lack of information about them.