Council Moves to Require Developers To Obtain Permission for Demolitions

The Cambridge City Council last night moved one step closer to requiring developers to obtain a removal permit before demolishing rental housing in the city.

The council passed to a second reading a bill, which would instruct the city's Rent Control Board to interpret an ordinance passed last year as requiring developers to obtain the permits.

Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci, who voted last week to table the motion, revived the bill last night when he switched his vote after listening to complaints from Cambridge tenants in buildings slated for demolition.

Tenants told the council that developers have successfully evaded the removal permit process by telling the Rent Control Board that they intended to demolish their properties before the law, intended to slow the conversion of rental property in the city to other uses, went into effect.

The amendment to the ordinance states that the original intention of the council was to require permits even if demolition had already been planned.

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"The Rent Board has read things into the language of the ordinance that were not there," David Salk, a tenant at 49 Roseland St., told the council. Salk's home is slated for demolition to make room for 17 parking spaces.

Peter Valentine, a tenant in a Blanche St. building slated for demolition by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told the council that "if you are concerned about getting a grip on the selfish and expansionistic policies of Harvard and MIT, this is one way to do it."

David Wolf, spokesman for one property owner seeking to demolish a building without a permit, said the demolition plans were made a month before the ordinance went into effect, and accused the council of "changing its laws in midstream."

"We pass ordinances all the time that affect future ordinances. Owners have no absolute right to assume that they will always be able to do what they want with their property," city councilor David Sullivan, who sponsored the ordinance, said.