The three communities with rent control policies--Boston, Brookline and Cambridge--required special enabling legislation from the state government. If the landlords could get the state to ban rent control, they could circumvent the rent control-friendly city governments.

The solution for rent control opponents in the state came in the form of Question Nine. The initiative was authored by Jon R. Maddox, a Cambridge resident and member of the Cambridge-based Small Property Owners Association (SPOA).

Maddox's initiative put the fate of rent control to a statewide popular vote: a yes for Question Nine meant a vote to abolish rent control.

After Question Nine passed by a margin of less than 1 percent in November 1994, proponents of rent control cried foul.

Rent control supporters say the initiative was unfair because it took the vote out of the affected communities.

"I question whether people around the state knew what they were voting for," says JoAnne Preston, a Cambridge resident since 1966 and founder of the Agassiz Tenants Organization, a tenants-rights group.

Opponents of rent control, however, say the injustice of rent control forced them to seek relief from outside the municipal government.

Schloming, founder of SPOA, compares the referendum to the civil rights movement.

"You could say the same thing about [both rent control and] slavery or about civil rights," she says. "You had to go outside the South."

Today, the legacy of rent control and the results of its overthrow remain to be seen.

Elizabeth Koundakjian, 62, has worked at a computer company and has taught at Boston College. She is now disabled and unable to work.

When asked what effect the end of rent control has had on her life, she responds, "Do you want it in a word? Devastation."

Koundakjian has lived in Cambridge for 31 years, 27 of them at 3 Linnaean Street, her present address. She qualifies for protected status because of her low income and pays only $525 a month for her two-bedroom apartment.

When rent protection for low-income tenants expires this December 31, however, Koundakjian expects her rent to increase to at least $1,300 a month, a price she says she could never afford.

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't say, 'This is my home. Where am I going to go?'" Koundakjian says.