Crimson Wrong On Rent Control

Last Month, Massachusetts voters decided to make rent control illegal. The Crimson chose to support the abolition of rent control, and recommended that its readers vote "yes" on Question 9 ("Vote yes on 9," Opinion, Nov. 8, 1994).

Rent control in Cambridge may have its problems, but one cannot overlook the consequences that may follow the abolition of rent control without providing for any kind of safety net. Cambridge may become unaffordable for many of its current residents, among them many of Harvard's graduate students.

One may wonder if it is out of a strong feeling of entitlement that the editors of The Crimson chose to endorse Question 9. Maybe from the Harvard undergraduate Houses, it is difficult to see all the way to the Cambridge apartments occupied by low-income families. Maybe some Crimson editors want Cambridge to become Yuppieville, and to lose the relative heterogeneity that the city now enjoys.

But if the initial endorsement of Question 9 may be criticized, it is The Crimson's criticism of any attempt by Cambridge to maintain some kind of rent control that I find bizare. Opposing any kind of compromise that will allow rent control for low income families requires deep insensitivity to issues of social justice.

Or maybe it is that the editors of The Crimson want to see a Cambridge which is unaffordable for the low-income families, graduate students and those "sixties left-overs" which now form part of the city's social fabric. --Aeyal Gross   Harvard Law School