Cambridge Rent Control Property Manager on Rent Control; The Current Position of “Activists”
1. Excellent Column.
2. Company unions domination of the post rent control tenant scene.
1. Excellent Column.
This week’s Cambridge Chronicle features a striking op end on Rent Control in Cambridge by a manager of a ten unit building under Rent Control. He says that by playing the system by its rules, he and others like him were allowed maximum rents for his units which nearly tripled the owner’s income. He refers to the operation of rent control as the model of fairness.
The article is: Phillip Barber: Rent Control was a fair solution to Cambridge’s unique problem. It is posted at http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20141119/NEWS/141116096/2011/OPINION.
His key comment reads: “
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Rent control was never about subsidizing the rents of individual tenants. Its intent was to protect the rental housing stock in Cambridge from the destabilizing effects of real estate speculation . . .
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This is a very astute short analysis of the situation. It functions as a shortened presentation of the Supreme Judicial Court analysis in the 70s by which the SJC found Rent Control legal.
The SJC very clearly dictated that the minute rent control became a subsidy, Rent Control was illegal as a taking of the landlords’ property.
For this reason, the landlords’ line was that Rent Control was a subsidy for tenants.
2. Company unions domination of the post rent control tenant scene.
The minute rent control died, the people controlling the tenant movement from the shadows adopted the landlords’ position on rent control.
They, and their front organizations, immediately declared that rent control is a subsidy. They inserted a demand that Rent Control be a subsidy into two reinstatement referenda which were rendered illegal by the presence of such a demand in the petitions.
Just another problem with “protective organizations” in the City of Cambridge, MA, USA in recent decades.
