Word: landlords
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...life, and he claims tomorrow will be no different. He's spent the past months throwing parties and sitting at his kitchen table with a magic marker and ruler to draw his own campaign posters. If Vellucci loses, it will be only to a much more conservative, pro-landlord independent, and, as one liberal councilor explained the difference between them and Vellucci, "Those people made it and they are concerned about being with people who made it. Al Vellucci always stayed in the same home in East Cambridge...
Enter condominium conversion. A landlord can convert a 15-unit apartment building worth $200,000 into 15 condominiums that sell for $25,000 or more apiece. To make the conversion even more popular, a high percentage of Cambridge's housing stock is old and often in need of major repairs. By converting, the owner can unload his property without major expense and still cash in on the laws of supply and demand...
Maria Mantzaris, a tenant in a building owned by the city's largest landlord and most ambitious converter Harlow Properties, testified at a city council hearing that she paid only $92 a month rent because Harlow Properties refuses to correct the building's numerous safety and sanitary code violations. Harlow Properties has scheduled the building in which she lives for conversion...
Clem favors conditional decontrol that would exempt four- to six-unit, owner-occupied buildings if the landlord makes specific improvements and convinces the board the increase does not remove the unit from the low or moderate income housing supply. He has not moved for this change on the council floor, Clem says, because that might give the appearance he is caving into the independents. So Clem says he will wait until after the results are in and consider the vote to be partly a referendum on the idea. Some critics argue that acting on the suggestion would have a much...
...ghetto areas like the South Bronx and Humboldt Park, landlords often see arson as a way of profitably liquidating otherwise unprofitable assets. The usual strategy: drive out tenants by cutting off the heat or water; make sure the fire insurance is paid up; call in a torch. In effect, says Barracato, the landlord or businessman "literally sells his building back to the insurance company because there is nobody else who will buy it." Barracato's office is currently investigating a case in which a Brooklyn building insured for $200,000 went up in flames six minutes before its insurance...