The Plan

If passed by Weld and the state legislature, the 17-page plan--which city officials worked to produce during a four-hour recess in the meeting--will result in the complete removal of all units from rent control by December 31, 1999.

The plan's 12 sections serve primarily to protect elderly, physically handicapped and "income eligible" tenants--those with incomes 90 percent or less than the median-income guidelines set up by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Its clauses stipulate:

* Decontrol on January 1 of one- to three-unit buildings;

* Decontrol on March 31 of four- to six-unit buildings, except for "income-eligible" tenants older than 62 or with children 19 or under, who would be protected through 1999;

* Decontrol on July 31 of buildings with seven or more units, except for "income-eligible," elderly or handicapped tenants, who would be protected through 1999;

* Controlled condominiums can be occupied by their owners starting January 1;

* Decontrol on January 1 of controlled condominiums not occupied by their owners, except for "income-eligible" tenants older than 62 or with children under 19, who would be protected for five years;

* Annual rent control increases permitted at five percent or the consumer-price index;

* Replacement of the current Rent Control Board with a Rent Equity Board which would oversee evictions.

'Unacceptable'

Even before the official vote, leaders of the four tenant and landlord groups involved in the Question 9 fight attacked the compromise.

Tenant activists said the council had abandoned rent control tenants in failing to permanently salvage some form of the 24-year-old program, which regulates 14,415 units in Cambridge, more than a third of the city's apartments.

"This proposal is far worse and far weaker than what Brookline is submitting to the state legislature," said Michael H. Turk, chair of the Cambridge Tenants Union (CTU). "All it provides for is a slightly delayed exodus of rent control tenants from the city of Cambridge."