"It was a lot of work, but we weren't afraid of doing it," they say. "We looked at it for the potential."

With help from his brother, a contractor in Methuen, Bologna finished the renovations in 1986.

That August he and Laura married, moved into the rear apartment and rented out the main residence.

Less than 11 months after receiving the first check from their new tenants, the Bolognas were dragged into a complex legal battle with their tenants and a Cambridge Rent Control Board that later admitted mistakes in the case.

It was a battle that left Laura and Vinnie with bitter feelings for not only the rent control regulations, but also the vast municipal bureaucracy that enforced them.

"It wasn't about justice," Vinnie Bologna says. "It wasn't about getting the landlord and tenants together to negotiate something. It wasn't even about helping people who couldn't afford it."

It was a system that for 10 years threatened to interrupt the Bologna's Long-term plans.

Now that rent control is moving out of politics into history, the Bolognas, facing more than $200,000 in debt, are settling their affairs and starting to getting on with their lives.

Both the Hills and the Bolognas see the rent-control issue as part of a broader shift within Cambridge.

They see sidewalks getting widened, bike paths popping up on Mass. Ave, and run down houses gettings spruced up.

It is the gentrification of Cambridge.

For people like Vinnie and Laura Bologna who can stay, it is an exciting time to be raising children.

But for long-time residents like Rick Hill who are forced to leave, it means fight to hold on to their way of life.

Rent control was narrowly repealed in a 1994 statewide referendum. But residents in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, the three communities with rent control regulations, voted overwhelmingly to keep protections.

In Cambridge, sources say that of the between 12,000 and 14,000 residents in rent controlled apartments before 1994, about 1,500 are still living under some form of protected status.