A regulation of the Cambridge rent control board requiring that a permit be obtained before any residential unit is removed from the rental housing market was in conflict with a city ordinance and thus invalid as applied to the occupancy of a residential condominium unit by the owner who, prior to purchasing it in , had been a tenant in that unit.
A city council, by readopting on three occasions the language of a certain ordinance, could not be considered to have ratified a conflicting interpretive regulation issued by the city's rent control board, in the absence of any legislative history affirmatively showing that the council intended ratification.
Inaction by a city council did not have the effect of ratifying an interpretive regulation of the city's rent control board which conflicted with the terms of a certain ordinance. The views and actions of the subsequent membership of a city council were not significant in determining the intent of the members who had adopted a certain ordinance.
A ordinance of the city of Cambridge dealing with the removal of rental units from the residential housing market and providing that only tenants who had occupied units before August 10, , would be eligible to own and occupy their units without a removal permit could not, without compensation to the owner, be applied to the owner of a condominium unit who, after her tenancy had commenced in , had purchased the unit with the primary expectation of living in it and with the reasonable belief that a prior ordinance, then in effect, gave her the right to buy the unit and remain in it.
On appeal of the first case to the Superior Court Department the cases were consolidated for trial before George W. Cashman, J. Frank I.
