Paul’s Final Wish was to make Cambridge a more equitable place.
When Paul E. Fallon purchased a Victorian four-family in Cambridge nearly 30 years ago, he wasn’t angling to become a minor real estate tycoon. But he wanted to raise his children in the city, and a single-family home was, even then, more than he could afford. “I bought it when a four-family house in Cambridge was a pariah because it was under rent control,’’ Fallon said. “There was no crystal ball in 1992 that told me this house was going to make me rich.’’
But it did. Fallon lived in one unit and rented out the others, first under rent control, then at fair market rents. Now a single man in his mid-60s, the writer and retired architect owns his property outright, like many retirees, but in just one generation, his home in what had long been a middle-class neighborhood of plumbers and electricians has become a multimillion-dollar asset.