Classic Example of Yellow Journalism

In a classic example of yellow journalism, Erica Werner reported on February 13 that Cambridge landlord Edward Zucker "slammed a huge rent increase on the tenants...forcing them to search for less costly housing" and that the "price hike took most tenants by surprise."

Why didn't Ms. Werner include all the facts of the February 11 City Council debate? Why didn't she include the fact that only four out of 33 tenants claimed that the large rent increase took them "by surprise" and would "force" them to leave their homes?

Why didn't she report landlord Zucker's statement that he spent two years negotiating with his tenants before applying to Rent Control for an increase, that he offered his tenants alternative low-rent housing and moving costs, that he spent $800,000 in repairs and renovations and has waited six years without one penny of this money reflected in his rents, and that his tenants have lived four years in "Cadillac" apartments paying "Chevrolet" rents?

How does a reporter covering a debate have the gall to report one party's claim as "the facts" and completely drop out the opposing party's claims? Werner's article is consciously or unconsciously designed to strengthen the Big Lie that justifies Cambridge's 20-year oppression and exploitation of landlords.

All tenants are helpless and poor. All landlords are despotic, rich and insatiably greedy--if not "milkers" of property who take the rent money and run, then "goldplaters" who repair their buildings just to raise rents extravagantly. And the Rent Control knights-in-shining armor save defenseless tenants from despotic landlords!

For 20 years, Cambridge's Big Lie has justified forcing the few to subsidize the many. The truth is that a city of 90,000 forces fewer than 700 of its small property owners to subsidize 28,000 tenants, many with higher incomes and more education than their landlords. The truth is that well-off tenants live in controlled apartments larger than they need and pay rents too low to cover the cost of major repairs.

Abt Study data shows that close to 6000 families with children have been displaced from large Rent Control apartments by single adults and childless couples and that almost half of all rent control tenants pay rents lower than 20% of their incomes.

Cambridge's Rent Control laws are not a whit different from laws depriving individuals of human rights not for personal reasons but solely because they belong to a racial, sexual, or ethnic group. A 19th century woman could not vote because of her sex, not because she was proven personally incompetent. Today, England detains Arab nationals simply because they are Arabs, not because any one of them is a proven terrorist.

And Cambridge's small property owners aren't free to manage their property only because they are multi-family landlords, not because any one of them is proven irresponsible, greedy, or despotic. Indeed, Cambridge Rent Control goes far beyond preventing windfall profits. It keeps rents so low that small landlords cannot possibly accumulate capital for their buildings' inevitable major repairs. (And for many small owners, the rents don't even cover the mortgage.)

By now, Cambridge is riddled with large numbers of deteriorated buildings. All agree that the buildings need money for major repairs. All agree that well-off Rent Control tenants can afford to pay more. The system needs change. But how? Raise the rents? Hell no. (Enter the Big Lie.) Landlords are insatiably greedy despots. They'll pocket the rent money and let their buildings fall apart. Cambridge's deteriorated buildings prove it!

So, the City's Council has proposed taxing Rent Control tenants and putting the money in the City's coffers. The fattened City bureaucracy will decide how to spend the landlord's rent. Shall we extend this mentality to other groups? Some individuals of one race or ethnic group may spend too much money on drink, drugs, and junk food. Therefore, the City should take the money of all members of that race or ethnic group and spend it for them. For their own good, of course.

The liberty of bank robbers and murderers is far better protected than my liberty as a small Cambridge landlord. The government must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a robber indeed committed the murder. Not so with landlords. (The Big Lie again.) Landlords are insatiably greedy despots.

I am a landlord. Therefore I am an insatiably greed despot. Without a single shred of direct evidence that I personally am not competent to manage my property, the city is depriving me of my right to manage my property and enjoy the fruits of my labor and investment.

Public expressions of racial, sexual, and ethnic bigotry are no longer acceptable, they are even encouraged by those Cambridge citizens benefitting from Rent Control's exploitation of small property owners! Bigotry is evil, whether it's racism, sexism, anti-Semitism or anti-landlordism.

Rent control may be legal. Anti-landlord bigots may even find it reasonable. But it's not right, not equitable, not fair, not just! Lenore M. Schloming '59