Word: controllers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...system, which governs renovation, and not the buying and selling of units, is an effort to avoid the legal obstacles that have hampered past attempts to prevent the spread of condominiums. Court challenges have already started for the new ordinance, though, and some condo developers predict the new rent control regulations will be outlawed before they're ever approved...
Condo conversion has a history and a future as a political issue. Five years ago, condos were rare in Cambridge, as they were in much of the country. Soaring home prices and the desire of landlords to be free of rent control helped spur the condo boom in Cambridge, a wave of conversions that shrunk the number of apartments in the city by 2000 in the past three years. "Condo conversion has really affected Harvard--it has cut the housing stock at a period when demand, especially from transient students, is increasing all the time," Sally Zeckhauser, president of Harvard...
Condo enthusiasts answer those arguments with claims of their own. "60 to 80 percent of condos are sold to the tenants who lived in the apartment that was converted," Walsh contends. "Buying those units is a stabilizing factor for them--there is no better rent control than a mortgage," he added. The "homeless elderly" problem will be solved soon too, Frisoli says. "There are two bills in the state legislature to protect the elderly from condo conversions. That seems to be the sore point, and it will be long gone by election day," he said...
...landlords, fear the spread of condos so much that they are making it the biggest issue in this fall's municipal election. "Contrast it with what's been happening in Boston where Mayor (Kevin) White has been able to quiet it all down," Sullivan said. "Condos and rent control are the kinds of issues that are important to focus on," he continues, "because they allow us to get at the contradictions in voting for the independent candidates." The independent city councilors are often lined up against the Cambridge Civic Association slate of reform progressives which disapproves of condos and favors...
Other campaign issues include city administration and what Frisoli calls the "liberal clique that has allowed this city to stagnate for ten years." But condo conversion and rent control will be among the deciding factors in the campaign. "There are more tenants than landlords in this city. We have always welcomed a vote on this, and we have done our best to make it an issue," Sullivan says...