Word: condominium
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...other forces may be hurting the CCA. The most controversial stance its members have taken in recent years was supporting a strong ban on condominium conversion, which had been quickly reducing Cambridge's rental housing stock. Many tenants wishing to buy their own units--and many developers wishing to buy units--have been angered by the anti-condo stand. Much of that feeling has coalesced behind the candidacy of Mary Allen Wilkes, a condominium owner in a building that was the scene of a nasty battle over illegal conversions earlier this year. Wilkes, a former CCA member, may take others...
...fact of life spawned the city's electoral slates--groups of candidates who run as a team, hoping to pick up support from their collegues' surplus ballots. The CCA slate, a group of 13 (8 for city council and 5 for school committee) candidates who favor rent control, oppose condominium conversion, and support affirmative action, traditionally elects several members on the strength of transfer ballots in the PR system...
These anti-condominium ordinances have proven the most controversial during the last few years because they have trapped many tenants in a seemingly no-win situation because the latest set of city codes forbid tenants-turned-condo owners from residing in their homes without special removal permits...
These tenants caught in the middle, high-income condominium owners, and developers who have been shut out of potential windfalls by the anti-condo ordinances form a powerful voting block which has CCA members running harder than ever to retain their council seats...
...councilor David Wylie, considered by many to be in the greatest danger of losing his council seat, recently pleaded with a group of tenants seeking condominium removal permits to remember their former plight as rent-control tenants. "Your financial situation has changed," Wylie told the tenants, "but the members of this council pledged to preserve rent control cannot change even if it is only two weeks before the election." Mary Allen Wilkes is the chief standard-bearer of the condo forces...