Word: classing
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...city may be near a new realignment. How soon and how dramatic it will be depend largely on one factor--the rate at which Cambridge is "gentrified." As condominium conversion lures professionsals to homes that once belonged to the ethnic working-class and the elderly, the chance of a substantial change in voting patterns is high. "There is an emerging constituency. It's almost a John Anderson constituency--liberal on social issues, but quite conservative on economic questions," Councilor David Sullivan, who collected the second highest number of votes during the last City Council election, says. Without regulation slowing condo...
...real question is how the new voters will behave. There are three distinct possibilities. The new class could merge easily into existing political coalition and not change the basic political cleavages in the city. They could infiltrate the current alignments and change them slowly from within. Or they could emerge as a new political force on their own, perhaps creating a new slate to join the battle with the existing camps. And whatever form the new challenge takes, it may provoke reactions from today's power brokers that will independently change the face of Cambridge politics...
...city's current porfessionals, who are by and large liberal, may not necessarily be indicators of the politics of this new condo class. Those lured by the condo lifestyle, as opposed to those who came to Cambridge to be near the universities, seem less likely to be liberal. The Cambridge upper class, which comprises the backbone of the CCA, is "not like those who may move in from Lincoln and Weston," Duehay says, adding, "There may be a liberal tinge, just because this is Cambridge, but I think they will be more conservative...
...that may be the biggest effect the condo class will have. If anti-gentrification legislation stays in place, the politicians' fears may prove groundless. But even so, those fears may trigger a realignment of city politics away from the old vested interests that influence both the CCA and Independent camps and toward a new coalition more interested in the city as a whole...
...subsidized units, and hence a lot of low-income people. But there is a very definite chance that we may not have the middle income, the people who are not eligible for subsidies, but who in no way can afford the rising costs of homes." Since working-class families comprise whole sections of Cambridge--notably North and East Cambridge--that would be a dramatic change, one felt especially in the city's schools and in City Hall...