Early each morning, Steve Buckley pulls up to the curb by the Someday Coffeehouse in Somerville. He parks on the traffic-filled street and strolls inside to find a steaming double latte and a bagel with cream cheese waiting for him and several regulars greeting him cheerfully.

And though Buckley shells out a few dollars on the breakfast, the small-town feeling in the urban town is something "you can't put a price on," he says.

Buckley is just one of the many Cantabrigians who have packed their bags and left Cambridge since the end of rent control three years ago pushed up prices on middle-income housing.

And three years later, Cambridge is slowly changing. Residents are, on average, a little wealthier; rents have predictably skyrocketed; political activism is on the decline.

But perhaps the biggest change is the hole left by the emigration of longtime Cantabrigians to lower-rent neighboring towns like Somerville.

As Somerville tries to hold on to its trademark ethnic diversity and urban feel in the wake of the Cantabrigian influx, Cambridge is losing the same battle as some of its most vocal groups diminish.

The End of an Era

According to a recent survey sponsored by the city of Cambridge, roughly 20 percent of residents who lived in rent-controlled buildings have left Cambridge altogether.

Somerville was a natural place for them to turn. Having voluntarily stopped rent control in the 1970s, it was relatively unaffected by the 1994 state referendum which ended rent control on Jan. 1, 1995.

It has remained cheaper than Cambridge for lack of a sizable university population which, due to high demand for property and the relatively high income of academics, tends to drive up prices, says James Bretta, executive director of the Somerville Community Development Department.

Barbara Cassessl of the Somerville Election Commission confirms that, since the end of rent control, a large number of voters previously registered in Cambridge are now Somerville residents.

Most are members of the lower-middle class, the income group hit hardest by the end of rent control.

While richer tenants could afford the increase in rent--which has increased an average of 15 percent since the end of rent control--and Cambridge's public housing was assisted with state aid, those in the lower-middle income bracket frequently left the city in search of cheaper quarters.

Since the end of rent control, the proportion of Cambridge renters with incomes greater than $60,000 has gone up from 14 to 25 percent, while those making between $20,000 and $60,000 fell from 62 to 55 percent, according to the city's Rental Housing Study, published in 1997.

"A lot of Cambridge residents have had to move out of the city because of the end of rent control and because prices have skyrocketed," says Cambridge City Councillor Katherine Triantafillou. "It's driving out the lower- and moderate-income families."