Though the housing convention supporters regarded the defeat of their bill as a tragedy, the real tragedy of the Cambridge housing crisis may be only beginning. The next few months may well be ones of lost opportunities for Cambridge; chances to alleviate the housing crisis are likely to slip away for lack of political push behind them. If the past year's agitation has done nothing else, it has at least created an awareness on the part of the City government and other institutions, primarily the universities, that some action is required on housing.
M.I.T., for example, last spring announced a program to build housing for its personnel and low-income Cambridge residents; Harvard is now preparing a comparable program. The City government has speeded up planning of several housing project that were long hanging in the air. Yet these hopeful signs do not mean that the plans will come to reality; continued political pressure is required for that.
MOST OF THE housing proposals, for example, will require approval of plans or zoning changes by the City Council. And it is almost axiomatic that even if everyone in a city is in favor of more low-income housing, just about no one wants a housing project in his neighborhood. If a zoning change is requested to build a housing project on any given site, it's a good bet that thirty neighbors of the site will come down to the council to tell them why the project would ruin the neighborhood. It is difficult to build a countervailing force to such opposition; no one is assured that, if the specific housing project is built, he or his aged mother will have a space reserved in it. So little pressure builds up in favor of the specific project.
The housing convention might have been one force to help build it, but its battle for rent control convinced many of its members that rent control is the most urgently-needed measure. The loss of the battle appears to have induced many to switch to referendum campaign where their fight for the cherished rent control can continue. Whether the housing convention can lure these supporters back, if only for an evening, to back for example, approval of a housing site is unclear. It may be impossible, for rent control remains the most attractive issue.
Furthermore, the votes of the "faithless five," as they have come to be termed, have alienated many housing convention members from the council; they feel that a majority of the council is not in favor of any real action on the housing crisis. The view is understandable since, for those who fought for it, rent control is the most real action that can be taken. Yet, given the very mixed consequences of the proposal, it is quite possible to reach the conclusion that rent control would do more harm than good. This, more than the fabled dollars of landlords, was perhaps the difference between four votes for rent control and five votes against it. A fraction of the pressure exerted over the rent control issue could easily give five votes in favor of other measures to alleviate the housing crisis.
After the decision on rent control became clear last Monday, several councillors asked the housing convention members to "sit down together with the council" to map out a concrete program on housing. The request may go unanswered, for much, perhaps too much blood has been shed over rent control in recent days.