Rent Control Gone But Not Forgotten

Rent control has been systematically phased out of Cambridge over the past five years, but its support in the community has not died.

Though city policy has shown no signs of a return to rent control, many Cantabrigians continue to agitate for a reversal of the current approach as the city's skyrocketing rents push its demographic up and up--and its lower and middle-class families out.

One specific policy that's become a hot topic recently is the city's "condo-conversion" ordinance.

Currently, Cambridge operates under Massachusetts law for the conversion of apartments to condominiums. State law stipulates that landlords must give tenants one year's notice before their apartments are converted.

But low-income advocacy groups are pushing to extend that 'warning period,' claiming it does not give residents adequate time to find new housing.

The Cambridge City Council will soon be considering a new condo-conversion ordinance that would make it more difficult for landlords to take control of tenants' homes.

"This would be a local condo control ordinance that would serve to enhance the state's current ordinance," Cavellini says. "The current one doesn't specify what condo conversion is, and it is very easy to get around the regulations."

The current ordinance, Cavellini says, gives landlords too much leeway for evicting tenants without "just cause."

Ellen Shachter, an attorney at Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services, wrote the current condominium proposal in an attempt to make the laws more stringent and more enforceable.

The current pattern of landlord obedience to the law is "almost a voluntary system," Shachter told the Cambridge Chronicle.

"The biggest danger of the current law [is that], with no oversight, there's nothing preventing landlords from evicting whole buildings of tenants," she said.

Cavellini says the chief goal of the new ordinance is to increase the time period for notification of conversion, giving tenants more time to explore and exercise their rights and to save money to purchase their apartments if possible.

"The state law is basically a notification law," he says. "Cambridge wants four years instead of one or two, and a definition of what it is to convert."

Another problem with the ordinance is that it contains loopholes allowing the state to bend the definition of conversion, say proponents of the new, stricter ordinance.

Shachter's proposal, similarly to the condo-conversion ordinance currently in effect in Boston, includes a list of factors that are early indicators that a landlord is thinking of converting a property into condominiums. One such factor is a hike in rent of more than 10 percent.

If a certain number of these factors were present, the landlord would be required to give tenants notice of intent to convert, regardless of whether he claims he intends to convert.

"If the state can get around the definition, it is too late to do anything about it," Cavellini says. "Early indicators of condominium conversion are in the new law, but not in the state law."

Finally, under Shachter's ordinance, if a renter does not purchase his apartment when it becomes a condominium, the city would be given the option to purchase the unit before the landlord can sell it to a third party.

Proponents claim this provision would prevent landlords from using condominium conversion as a means of eviction.

While the condo-conversion statute represents an effort by activists to make the best of a Cambridge without rent control, many are still hopeful for its return.

EFZ member Bill Cavellini says though rent control is taking a hiatus for a short time, he is confident that it will someday return.

"The return of rent control would help us dramatically to keep rents down," Cavellini says. "There is absolutely a chance that it will return. It will not happen in the next two years, but the momentum is building for it to come back."

In November's elections, rent control was conspicuously absent from the ballot, replaced by a question about nuclear weapons proliferation.

Advocates for low-income residents see the omission as a purposeful measure to dictate the election's results.

"The strategy was to put the question on the ballot not because it would win. It would have mobilized voters, and the turnout would have been better for tenants," says Glenn Koocher, local political analyst and host of television show Cambridge Inside Out. ?????????

Rent control, Cavellini says, affects not only low income families who are moving out of the city, but also middle-class families who must now pay higher prices for their own houses.

"At the current rate at which Cambridge is growing, people will soon be priced out, as they are in New York City," Cavellini says.

At present, there is no control placed on rent in the city, but the efforts of the EFZ have been instrumental in keeping tenants in their buildings.

"We try to defend tenants that are being evicted," Cavellini says. "We try to help them negotiate with their landlords so that they don't get evicted."

Currently, he says, the only alternative to homelessness for low-income families is public housing.

"Right now, there isn't any affordable housing available," Cavellini says. "They have to qualify for public housing."

So EFZ's objective is unity.

"We know from experience that tenants working together in a group are much stronger than an individual trying to deal with this problem alone," Marcotte says.