Word: tenants
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...version of the bill to replace the old one. Cities like Cambridge--which is interested primarily in maintaining rent control within its boundaries and secondly in keeping the law at the state level--have come up with their own proposals for maintaining an intramural brand of rent control. Some tenant groups lined up with the city to push for local control; others, seeing what they think are dire effects of making rent control a piece-meal local affair, have turned to non-legislative action...
...language of the state-wide law to write his bill, the home-rule version that the council finally approved contains additions and revisions that extend the state law and stiffen some of its provisions. One change the council included was a rewording of the requirements for evicting a tenant. The Cambridge plan shifts the burden of proof of malfeasance onto the landlord's shoulders, and demands that only when the tenant has exhausted "all meritorious defences" can he be thrown out. Just as important is Cambridge's decision to change the date at which rents were fixed. Under the Cambridge...
...most controversial part of the proposed Cambridge plan is its inclusion of subsidized housing under rent control. Under the existing Massachusetts law, housing that is built or subsidized by the Federal Housing Authority of the Massachusetts Housing Finance Authority is specifically exempted from control. But arguments presented by tenant groups from subsidized housing in the city, and especially their tales of $250 monthly rents for "low-cost" one-bedroom apartments, convinced the council to include FHA and MHFA housing in their plan. Most observers and lobbyists predict that this part of the Cambridge petition will get the most resistance from...
...wording of the Cambridge petition has already drawn fire from other elements of the community besides lawmakers. Members of the Cambridge Rent Control Task Force, a coalition of various tenant, elderly and general interest organizations were disappointed by the council's decision to include the state bill's "luxury decontrol" clause. Under this rule, the executive body of the rent control legislation, in this case the council itself, can exempt up to 25 per cent of units from rent control as long as the apartments go for rents that are above an arbitrary limit. The clause was originally intended...
Both groups point to the example of Boston, where a vacancy decontrol amendment--designed to end rent control on an apartment as soon as the current tenant has left--was recently added to that city's six-year-old home-rule act. Almost every supporter of rent control insists that vacancy decontrol is "virtual decontrol." While landlords and realtors assert that vacancy decontrol doesn't hurt the long-term tenant--the "real" residents, as they like to put it--rent control supporters point to the fact that historically it is the poorest workers who move the most within their...