Last month, the City Council's Rent Control Subcommittee unveiled the most comprehensive reform proposal in the system's 20-year history. Will this attempt appease the city's frustrated tenants and property owners?

From its inception 20 years ago into the fabric of Cambridge's real estate market and political structure, the city's rent control system has been the subject of more controversy than any other issue in City Hall's Sullivan Chamber.

After two decades of scattered alterations, defeated amendments and unending political and legal bickering, the system, which proponents say has singlehandedly provided low-income tenants with affordable housing, now stands at the crossroads of a comprehensive revamping.

Late last month, the City Council's Rent Control Subcommittee published a 38-page, 18-point proposal to address the numerous maladies which currently plague Cambridge's system. The subcommittee called upon third-year Harvard Law School student Richard Ford to orchestrate the package dealing with the city's "hottest issue."

And the best way to achieve this goal, he said, was to hear what all involved parties had to say. From the time he began working on the project in November, Ford said he talked to city councillors, the mayor, tenants, property owners and officials from other rent control programs.

"A good part of what I had to do was get rid of the opposition and tension so that it would no longer be viewed as a 'tenants versus landlords' system," Ford said.

The proposal which emerged from Ford's four laborious months addresses a wide range of complex issues, but Jonathan S. Myers, who sits on the subcommittee alongside fellow city councillors William H. Walsh and Kenneth E. Reeves '72, said the report succeeds in addressing three "real concerns."

"Beyond the implicit, obvious aim to limit rent increases to a level that low and moderate earners can afford," Myers said, "we want to make the times for increases as predictable as possible for both the tenants and the property owners, and to maintain and improve the overall condition of the housing stock."

While the report recommends a 30 percent increase cap and regulation of the timing of the rent adjustment to address Myers's first two concerns, its suggestions for maintaining the city's deteriorating, rent-controlled housing stock allow for a number of options.

These options include a two to five percent Affordable Housing Preservation Fund fee, to be levied on middle and upper income tenants, and a revolving loan fund allowing property owners to borrow money at low interest rates to maintain the rent-controlled buildings.

"It's a good, strong report which speaks to the issues and captures the essence of what Cambridge rent control needs," Myers said. "We must improve and strengthen the system by making it fairer to everybody, taking the tension and the anger out of the system."

David E. Sullivan, a city councillor for 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s who chaired the rent control subcommittee, said he supports most of the proposal, "as long as some of the technical inaccuracies are corrected in the final version."

"The property owners and the tenants will definitely benefit from the proposal, for the owners will now know flat out when they are entitled to receive rent increases, and the tenants will know ahead of time when to expect them," Sullivan said.

"Also, there will be some money set aside to prevent the buildings from deteriorating. The two to five percent fee on tenants makes sense, provided that it is limited to those earning upper and middle incomes."

Tentative Support