Another Rent Control Bill Advanced For Nov. Ballot

The Cambridge Rent Control Referendum yesterday took another step towards placing its version of a rent control ordinance before the Cambridge voters at the November elections.

The group presented Acting City Clerk Paul Healy with a stack of 1776 petition sheets calling for a November vote on their rent control ordinance, which would roll back rents to January 1968 levels and allow eight per cent yearly increases on the approval of a rent control board. They claimed to have signatures of over 9000 Cambridge voters on the petitions.

The petitions were sent to the City's board of Election Commissioners; which must now check them to see if they contain the approximately 3297 valid signatures (eight per cent of Cambridge's 41,213 registered voters) needed to put the measure on the ballot. If the petitions contain more than the required number of signatures, the city council then has 20 days to pass the ordinance without amendment, or it will be put to the voters in November.

The rent control referendum was begun by the radical Cambridge Peace and Freedom Party. Among the three official sponsors of the measure is Hilary Putnam, professor of Philosophy and a leading supporter of the SDS position during last April's crisis at Harvard.

A member of the referendum group estimated that somewhat over half the 9000 signatures were collected in door-to-door canvassing throught Cambridge during the past two months, and the remain der from stands in Harvard and Central Squares.

Though styled a "referendum" by its sponsors, the action is legally known as an "initiative petition," since the ordinance which is it proposes initiates with private citizens and has never been before the City Council.

The rent control referendum, has exchanged sharp words over the past months with the Cambridge Housing Convention, the other group pushing for rent control in the City.

The referendum group has derided the less radical housing convention for addressing its request for rent control to the City Council which the rent control referendum views as a tool of Cambridge landlords, Harvard, M.I.T., and the Federal government.

This marks the second time in recent years that a local organization has attempted to use the initiative petition route to get an ordinance approved for Cambridge. In the fall of 1967 two anti-war groups attempted to have petitions opposing the Vietnam War placed on the ballot.

One of the anti-war groups failed to have enough valid signatures on its petitions; the other--the Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam--got its petition on the ballot. The measure failed to pass, receiving about 39 per cent of the vote in the election