City Suggests Minimum Rents

Cambridge City Councillors have been well informed of the needs of the city's small landlords lately. Every week for the past three months, members of the Small Property. Owners Association (SPOA) have. been picketing City Hall and speaking on rent control issues.

In response to their persistence, Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci appointed a "Green Ribbon" Committee this summer to investigate the possibility of establishing a system of minimum rents for the city's rent-controlled apartments.

Last week, the committee presented the City Council with a report of its conclusions. And last night, councillors voted to send its recommendations to the city's Rent Control Board.

But although the committee's work is now complete, few are happy with the results. And least happy are the members of the committee themselves.

"We're very dissappointed with the recommendations of the chairman," says John Natale, a SPOA representative. "This is not, in our opinion, a good-faith recommendation."

Although both landlord and tenant organizations were represented on the committee, the two groups could not reach a consensus. So the report contains only the recommendations of the chair, Assistant City Manager Michael Rosenberg.

SPOA members say that the minimum level of rents suggested by Rosenberg is far too low to provide landlords with the income necessary to properly maintain and improve their buildings.

For example, Rosenberg's suggested minimum rent for a four-room heated apartment is $336. SPOA members used two methodologies to calculate an appropriate minimum rent, and came up with figures of $502 and $720 for the same unit, the report states.

Members of the Cambridge Tenants Union say they are also dissatisfied with Rosenberg's write up. Michael H. Turk, co-chair of the union, says his group wanted the city to initiate a program of outreach to specific landlords with low rents, rather than raise rents across the board.

"I think its going to prove to be too broad a brush," Turk says. "I think the idea of engaging in a policy of outreach is better."

But in his report, Rosenberg calls the outreach approach impractical by-itself. It would take one full-time employee 2.6 years to make all the necessary adjustments, according to the document.

And small property owners also dislike the outreach proposal. "We don't need outreach and counseling," Natale says. "We need higher rents immediately."

But the report is only a suggestion. As Rosenberg states in the document, "Under Ch. 36 of the Acts of 1976, the Rent Control Act, only the Rent Control Board has the authority to promulgate the regulations which would be required to implement the recommendations."

And the ultimate fate of the report and the rent control system lies in the hands of the City Council, Vellucci says.

"That will go to the new City Council," the mayor says. "I have done my work, and I have no idea what they will do."