Another Strategy

(The following represents the opinion of a minority of the editorial board.)

FOR MOST of this fall and winter, Cambridge has been debating how best to alleviate its housing shortage. Charges, counter-charges, and proposed solutions have flown back and forth in the City Council chambers, in private meetings of small gourds, and at large public rallies. As is frequently the case in this City--where politics ranks as one of the leading sports for students and townspeople alike--much of the debate has drastically oversimplified the problem. It is one which may not admit of quick or simply solutions.

Virtually everyone admits that Cambridge has a housing problem, and some, perhaps a majority of the citizens, term it a crisis. There is little data indicting the extent of the problem, of its impact on various groups in the City. A rent survey based on news, newspaper ads, and a poll of 2000 senior citizens show that rents have risen sharply in recent years, and that many elderly persons are paying much of their income for rent. To social scientists, the data might seem inadequate, but for purposes of public policy-making, it seems safe to assume that a housing problems--however poorly outlined--does exist.

What lies behind this problem is fairly easy to induce. Cambridge has an odd problem for a core city: a lot of people, particularly a lot of people with money, want to live here. The reason, of course, is the presence of two large universities, which draw large numbers of students and, more important, hangers-on ranging from hippies to young professionals, onto the City's housing market. Moreover, the Inner Belt will, in the foreseeable future, displace 1200 to 1500 Cambridge families and the Route 2 extension into North Cambridge a somewhat smaller numbers.

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.

THOUGH this bill sounds attractive to many on its face, in practice and in the long run it would tend to damage--no improve--the housing situation in Cambridge. The rate of increase of rents might slow but this slackening would not be universal, and it would be at the cost of a gradual dilapidating and stagnation of the City's housing stock.

A 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.

Such behavior cannot be stopped by the law alone, but only by the enforcement of the law--a fact which the referendum organizers themselves acknowledge by calling for a continued enforcement campaign.

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 tenants, would probably have the most success in their tangles with rent control administrators.

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;

* Compete for rent-controlled apartments, thus increasing the incentives for landlords under rent control to evade the law.

* Find an apartment not under rent control, and outbid the current tenants of that apartment.

* Live outside of Cambridge, and increase the pressure on the housing market of, for example, Somerville or Brighton.

It is, of course, difficult to say exactly how much of the increased burden would fall upon Cambridge, and how much upon other cities, particularly when it is not clear how many housing units in the City would fall under rent control and how many would remain exempt. The pressure on housing created by the lack of new construction would flow in many directions, but in any case this stagnation would have important implications--ones seemingly ignored by the referendum campaign--on the cost of all types of housing available in Cambridge.

What Cambridge needs in more housing, particularly more law rent housing, to relieve immediate needs, but also higher cost housing to avert such potential pressure on the present low-rent stock. Rent control should be considered in the light of its effects on the overall housing stock of the City, and effect, at least in the long run, is likely to be negative.

Not that rent control can remain indefinitely in effect in Cambridge. The state's home rule provision limit its duration to four years. After that, the law must be renewed. Though the rent control referendum has remained generally quiet on the subject of renewal, the strong stress their literature places upon rent control as a solution to the housing problem, and private comments on the possibility of renewal, indicate that the campaign envisions an attempt to keep rent control in effect for a long term. As such, it is clearly a misguided effort.

IF, ON THE OTHER HAND, rent control were to be envisioned and presented as only a short term, stop-gap measure clearly subordinated to a drive for more low-cost housing, it might well aid the overall housing situation in the City. A four year period of rent control, for example, might protect to some extent the elderly, and others hardest hit by rent increases without doing irreparable damage to Cambridge's housing supply. If rent control were instituted, and a pledge was made not to try to renew it if a given number of low-income housing units were constructed by the time it expired, landlords might even by induced to work for low income housing or at least to drop opposition to it.

At present, a drive for low income housing project appears to be a distant project for the referendum organizers; it's a take, they think, to be attacked after rent control has been won, and a campaign has been waged for enforcement of housing codes. This strategy is patently infeasible. Once the "victory" of rent control is won, the bulk of neighborhood residents will likely rest on their dubious laurels, perhaps forever, at least until it becomes obvious that rent control has not helped the housing situation. By then it will be too late. Most of Cambridge's residents will have rested in their rent-controlled apartments, while, at a minimum, the 1200 to 1500 Inner Belt families have been forced to leave Cambridge for lack of low-income housing.

ONLY A campaign which makes it clear to its supporters--as the rent control referendum does not--that rent control is subordinate to the long term goal of pushing the City government to increase the low-income housing in the City will have a chance of alleviating the housing crisis. Rent control per se should not be played up; it should be played down. The referendum should not sell panaceas, but rather a coherent strategy, to Cambridge's residents.

And the Cambridge City government is more open to pressure for additional low-income housing than the referendum organizers seem to think. Though some of the City Councillors may have what are commonly called "ties" with real estate interests, they are politicians foremost, and interests are useful to them only insofar as they help the councillors to retain office. Under Cambridge's proportional representation system of elections, a relatively small, but concentrated number of votes can swing an election. Given the City's poor record on constructing low-income housing in recent years, an organizing campaign for more low-income housing--with an implicit threat of action at the polls--might prove remarkably efficient in spurring the City Council to more vigorous support for housing.

The council, of course, has much less power than the City Manager, but it retains one vital power: firing the City Manager. Two Cambridge City Mangers have been fired within the last three years. The threat of another firing would probably assure that the current manager, James L. Sullivan, would follow up on his promising beginning in the housing area. Sullivan is reputed to want to "make a name for himself" while City Manager here; beginning a large-scale program for construction of low-rent housing by the City and the universities would be one good way to do it.

A not insignificant choice thus faces those who are now organizing the rent control referendum. They can shift their strategy somewhat, and have a good chance of obtaining something approaching a satisfactory solution to the problem. Or they can continue on their present path, pushing a campaign that is likely to produce little but bitter memories for Cambridge residents in the end.