Newly-named city councillor Anthony D. Galluccio says the best thing about entering politics at the age of 27 is "not having a lot of money."

"The only people I owe money to are Discover Card and Visa," he jokes.

The youngest member of the nine-member city council, Galluccio says he is tied to no special interests and hopes to be an objective voice in the politically polarized group.

The legislative aide was last month named the successor to William H. Walsh on the Cambridge City Council, following Walsh's removal in November following federal sentencing on charges of bank fraud and conspiracy.

Galluccio, who lives with his mother in a Buckingham St. condominium, is a native Cantabridgian and a night student at Suffolk University Law School.

Although he is a Democrat, many of Galluccio's ideas are socially conservative.

His fervent opposition to rent control makes him very ideologically similar to Walsh.

Rent control--which has existed in Cambridge since 1970--was abolished by a statewide referendum on Election Day. The state legislature this week passed an emergency act that would preserve rent control for certain low-income tenants in Cambridge, Boston and Brookline for a maximum of two years.

The councillor says the city must emphasize home ownership as rent control ends in the city.

"Everywhere in the country the focus has shifted from rental assistance to home ownership, except here," Galluccio says.

"Politicians have benefited far too long from a system which places the burden for subsidizing [tenants] on property owners," the councillor adds. "Rent control hasn't afforded people the opportunity to own their homes."

Galluccio says he feels that rent control resulted in "gentrification" and has "artificially inflated" market values for housing in Cambridge.

He believes Harvard and M.I.T. have gotten off easy under rent control, despite the large pool of their students in need of affordable housing.

"Rather than putting pressure on the universities to supply an adequate supply of housing for [their] students," Galluccio says, "Cambridge has footed the bill for a large part of the student population."

Under the legislature's act, which Gov. William F. Weld '66 signed Wednesday, no student older than 18 years of age can continue living under rent control.