"It sucks," said Lester P. Lee Jr., campaign chair of the pro-rent control Save Our Communities Coalition (SOCC), which spearheaded the fight against Question 9. "It's a capitulation. People need more protection than that. They need time to adjust."

Lee said the councillors had ignored the needs of Cantabrigians. "They want to depopulate the city and then gentrify it," he told The Crimson.

Rent control opponents agreed, but for different reasons. "This compromise plan is unacceptable," Denise A. Jillson, chair of the Massachusetts Homeowners Coalition (MHC), told the council.

"Your compromise fails to recognize what Question 9 intended," Jillson added. She said the plan unfairly placed responsibility for tenants' welfare on landlords' shoulders.

"I think it's too little, too late," agreed Linda B. Levine, co-chair of the Small Property Owners Association (SPOA). "It still leaves the largest property owners under a regulatory system for five years."

Public Response

The reactions of the more than 350 Cantabrigians who packed City Hall last night were equally unfavorable. Tenant activists passed out "I Pledge to Resist" stickers for rent control supporters, while others pledged a campaign of civil disobedience starting January 1.

Rent control tenants said they would be personally hurt by a weak petition to save rent control.

"I work so hard to support my kids, my income came probably to be a little bit too much than [the HUD guidelines]," said Coles Voyard, a two-year tenant who broke into tears as he addressed the council. "But I know next year it's going to be 10 times less. There is no hope for us."

Paul Landauer, a 19-year resident, expressed anger at what he deemed the council's abandonment of responsibility. "It's absolutely appalling that you indiscriminately throw me and people like myself to the wolves," he told the council. "I had planned to live where I live until I die."

Robert Lie, a tenant, said the petition is so ineffectual it is sure to pass.

"Believe me, [Weld's] going to sign this one," he told the council. "I say, let's wrap up the current rent control system and hand it to Charlie Flaherty."

In a new trend, several tenants said they planned to disobey Question 9, regardless of the success of the home-rule petition.

"We'll engage in civil disobedience," said Ellen Kaye, a member of the Eviction Free Zone, a tenant group. "We tried every way that we could to get the city to represent us. All that's left to us is to stay in our homes no matter what and to build a community that's strong."

But Question 9 supporters said the city is trying desperately to ignore a democratic referendum.