Word: rent
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Realizing the existence of some magnitude of a housing problem in the City, and the probability that it will get worse, various public an private groups--primarily the CEOC's Cambridge Housing Convention and the Peace and Freedom Party's Cambridge Rent Control Referendum--have begun pausing for action on the housing situation. Of late, the rent control referendum has attracted the most attention...
...landlord owning a rent-controlled building has a double incentive to allow maintenance to deteriorate: it lessens his operating costs, and it may help him to get rid of troublesome tenants to to be replaced by ones willing--in a tight housing market--to ignore the law and pay extra under the table for a vacant apartment...
Calling for it is one thing, getting it is another. The rent control board with its elected majority would, in practice, exercise only a loose overseer ship love the administration of the bill. The bulk of administrative duties would rest with a bureaucracy which, like all others, would be only sporadically sensitive to popular pressure. Given limited resources, such a bureaucracy would likely respond only to complaints pressed over a long period through its channels. It is doubtful that many lower income lower income residents would have the time or resources to press these complaints. Middle class, not lower class...
More important than the difficulties of administering the lewd is its effects on the housing supply within the City. Organizers of the rent control referendum have acknowledged that new constructing would be discouraged by its prohibition against tearing down controlled housing without replacing it with an equivalent number of new units at the same rent. They argue that this is desirable, since, as a newsletter puts, it, only "expensive new apartments are built which few families can afford...
TRUE, MOST of the apartment now being constructed in Cambridge do not qualify as low rent housing, but such apartment -- which usually represent a net addition to the housing supply--soak up a portion of the housing demand which would otherwise bid for existing units. In effect, if new apartments, are not built due to rent control, the people who would have lived in them have three choices...