Council Includes Co-ops Under Removal Ordinance

The Cambridge City Council last night voted to include cooperative housing developments under an ordinance designed to limit the removal of rent-controlled apartments from the city's tight housing market.

The vote, an attempt to close what Councilor David Sullivan called "the latest loophole dreamed up by developers determined to terrorize the people of Cambridge," clarifies the city's removal ordinance to explicitly require developers of cooperatives to obtain permits from the city.

Several developers within the last month have claimed that the cooperatives, in which tenants buy shares of the building, are exempt under state law from rent control and hence from the removal ordinance.

Court

One housing developer has already gone to court to challenge the cooperative limitations, which the rent board had enforced pending the council vote, and another said last night he would probably sue the city.

Gordon Ramsay, a lawyer for developers attempting to convert an apartment building at 295 Harvard St. to a cooperative, warned the council last night that individual members might be "held liable for considerable money damages" if they "interfered" with the formation of cooperatives.

Opponents of cooperatives have charged that the plans, common in some parts of the country, are an attempt to evade laws limiting condominium conversions and that, if cooperative developments are allowed, they may force poor and elderly tenants out of the city, replacing them with upperclass residents who are able to afford the price.

No Holes

"Developers, with their fertile imaginations, claim to have devised a loophole," Sullivan said. "We want to make clear tonight that cooperatives do not fall through any loophole," he added.

Ramsay charged that attempts to thwart cooperative development "violated the fundamental guarantees of the federal constitution to the right of property."

Despite the expected court challenges, Sullivan said after the vote, that he was confident the limitations on cooperative conversion, would stand. "I think we have an even stronger case then when we set out to regulate condominiums, and that action was upheld by a judge," he said.

Five councilors supported the "clarifying ordiance" while three, Walter Sullivan, Thomas W. Danehy and Kevin P. Crane '73, opposed it. Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci joined the four members of the liberal Cambridge Civic Association in voting for the measure