What Cambridge needs in more housing, particularly more law rent housing, to relieve immediate needs, but also higher cost housing to avert such potential pressure on the present low-rent stock. Rent control should be considered in the light of its effects on the overall housing stock of the City, and effect, at least in the long run, is likely to be negative.
Not that rent control can remain indefinitely in effect in Cambridge. The state's home rule provision limit its duration to four years. After that, the law must be renewed. Though the rent control referendum has remained generally quiet on the subject of renewal, the strong stress their literature places upon rent control as a solution to the housing problem, and private comments on the possibility of renewal, indicate that the campaign envisions an attempt to keep rent control in effect for a long term. As such, it is clearly a misguided effort.
IF, ON THE OTHER HAND, rent control were to be envisioned and presented as only a short term, stop-gap measure clearly subordinated to a drive for more low-cost housing, it might well aid the overall housing situation in the City. A four year period of rent control, for example, might protect to some extent the elderly, and others hardest hit by rent increases without doing irreparable damage to Cambridge's housing supply. If rent control were instituted, and a pledge was made not to try to renew it if a given number of low-income housing units were constructed by the time it expired, landlords might even by induced to work for low income housing or at least to drop opposition to it.
At present, a drive for low income housing project appears to be a distant project for the referendum organizers; it's a take, they think, to be attacked after rent control has been won, and a campaign has been waged for enforcement of housing codes. This strategy is patently infeasible. Once the "victory" of rent control is won, the bulk of neighborhood residents will likely rest on their dubious laurels, perhaps forever, at least until it becomes obvious that rent control has not helped the housing situation. By then it will be too late. Most of Cambridge's residents will have rested in their rent-controlled apartments, while, at a minimum, the 1200 to 1500 Inner Belt families have been forced to leave Cambridge for lack of low-income housing.
ONLY A campaign which makes it clear to its supporters--as the rent control referendum does not--that rent control is subordinate to the long term goal of pushing the City government to increase the low-income housing in the City will have a chance of alleviating the housing crisis. Rent control per se should not be played up; it should be played down. The referendum should not sell panaceas, but rather a coherent strategy, to Cambridge's residents.
And the Cambridge City government is more open to pressure for additional low-income housing than the referendum organizers seem to think. Though some of the City Councillors may have what are commonly called "ties" with real estate interests, they are politicians foremost, and interests are useful to them only insofar as they help the councillors to retain office. Under Cambridge's proportional representation system of elections, a relatively small, but concentrated number of votes can swing an election. Given the City's poor record on constructing low-income housing in recent years, an organizing campaign for more low-income housing--with an implicit threat of action at the polls--might prove remarkably efficient in spurring the City Council to more vigorous support for housing.
The council, of course, has much less power than the City Manager, but it retains one vital power: firing the City Manager. Two Cambridge City Mangers have been fired within the last three years. The threat of another firing would probably assure that the current manager, James L. Sullivan, would follow up on his promising beginning in the housing area. Sullivan is reputed to want to "make a name for himself" while City Manager here; beginning a large-scale program for construction of low-rent housing by the City and the universities would be one good way to do it.
A not insignificant choice thus faces those who are now organizing the rent control referendum. They can shift their strategy somewhat, and have a good chance of obtaining something approaching a satisfactory solution to the problem. Or they can continue on their present path, pushing a campaign that is likely to produce little but bitter memories for Cambridge residents in the end.