"This comes from state aid funds," Jillson said. "All taxpayers in Massachusetts pay for rent control."

"Should [the state] cut back programs because Cambridge is subsidizing high income tenants?" she asked.

City Councillor William H. Walsh, who was re-elected to the council last year by antirent control voters despite being under federal indictment for bank fraud, said he, too, agrees that rent control should be decided at the state level.

The Issue

Rent control is the issue that changes everything, supporters say. It can prevent homelessness, help the poor and even stop massive street riots before they start.

"Rents [in the area] are totally obscene," said Kaufman, a member of the steering committee the Cambridge Tenants Union. "It's totally appropriate for the government to intervene for consumer protection."

"Who the hell pays the kind of money for rent?" he asked.

Kauffman alternatively called area rents "astronomical" and "extortionist."

Kaufman said that if rent control was abolished in the city, Cambridge would "probably become more homogeneous. Much whiter, much richer, much more professional."

Cavellini said rent control helps prevent homelessness because it allows more people to afford housing.

And "lawlessness" is also reduced by the measure, the cab driver said. Before rent control was instituted in Cambridge, Cavellini said tenants were often evicted without just cause.

And that in turn, he said, invariably resulted in hundreds or even thousands of citizens taking to the streets to prevent the police from carrying out the evictions.

These risks aside, area real estate consultant Andrew M. Olins said that rent control is simply bad economic policy.

"In macroeconomic terms, controls on rents have never been a solution to the real estate problem," Olins said.

Olins said rent control is a waste of public funds. "It's the public sector supplying subsidies, which drain funds from the public budget to people who don't need it," he said.

And Walsh, who could finish his term on the city council in a federal jail cell, said rent control amounts to "Subsidizing the rich" because many wealthy people live in rent-controlled housing.

"It's been a disaster for 23 years in the city and it's time for a change," Walsh said. "Don't perpetuate bad policy because it's politically correct."

Why is it politically correct?

"Because if I offered to subsidize your col-