City Should Not Try to Subvert Vote

Not unexpectedly, the City of Cambridge is attempting a massive last-ditch effort to save rent control. In response to the passage of Question 9 in the recent statewide referendum which abolished the practice, Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72, City Manager Robert W. Healy and City Councillor Jonathan S. Meyers are among those teaming with House Speaker Charles F. Flaherty (D-Cambridge) in the crusade to defend the failed policy.

To circumvent the expressed will of Massachusetts, Cambridge is trying to formulate a home-rule petition that will allow the city to keep a modified form of rent control. It faces serious obstacles, not the least of which is division within the pro-rent control community.

At recent Cambridge city council meetings, several groups submitted proposals, but no consensus emerged. If the petition is not filed by Thanksgiving, the units under rent control will go on the open market as of January 1.

And even if the council does manage to piece the petition together, it is likely to meet the unfriendly veto pen of Governor William F. Weld '66, a strong opponent of rent control.

It's fair to say then that there is little danger of a return to the policies of the past.

More important though than the question of whether Cambridge will succeed in its attempt to reinstate rent control, is whether it should even try.

The right that Cambridge now claims to subvert that decision is really not a right at all. A local community has the right to defy a barger political entity if and only if it thinks fundamental rights have been violated. In this case, the city would have to persuade the courts that the removal of rent control infringes on the defined liberties of its inhabitants. And that will be a hard case to make.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Cambridge, through its rent control policies, has violated the fundamental rights of property owners, and in so doing has badly distorted the Cambridge housing market. As basic economics would predict, rent control has led to shortages and ill-maintained properties.

The city has no right to defy the verdict of the people in order to reinstate a violation of fundamental property rights.

If Cantabrigians seek to dismiss the voters' will on the issue of rent control, why should they bother to abide by other state mandates? Perhaps Cambridge should hold its own referendum to secede from the state entirely.

Cambridge justifiably views itself as a unique community within Massachusetts. This distinctiveness does not, however, translate into a right to flaunt the will of the people of the state.