CTOC Plans Suit Against Rent Control Board Challenging Its Approval of Rent Increases

The Cambridge Tenants Organizing Committee (CTOC) plans to file a class action suit against the Cambridge Rent Control Board challenging the city-wide rent increase the board approved December 30.

CTOC, along with other Cambridge community groups, is also organizing tenants to withhold their rent increases in protest of the rent board's three-to-two decision to approve the rent hike.

Bill Leary a spokesman for CTOC, said yesterday that many Cambridge tenants will be faced with eviction because they cannot afford the 10-to-20 per cent hike in rent.

The lawyer representing CTOC, and Leary; would not comment on the suit itself, but Leary did agree to discuss what the CTOC believes may be illegal about the rent increase.

Leary said the CTOC believes the courts will be sympathetic to the landlords in considering the suit and that only massive pressure from tenants withholding the increase will Force the course to recognize the illegality of the increase.

He said that CTOC believes the increase is illegal because two of the five board members, who both voted for the increase. Paul Watkins and Fred Cohn, are landlords. Leary said this may be a violation of the state's conflict of interest law and of the due process clause of the federal Constitution.

Cohn said yesterday that the form adopted when the rent control board was first set up involved a five man board "under the general assumption, cognizable in court. I think, that two members would be tenants and two would be landlords. Therefore, the argument seems ridiculous."

CTOC also contends that the rent hike is illegal because it provides landlords with more than a fair net operating income.

George Waldstein, chairman of the rent hoard said last week that the increase is fair considering that Cambridge rents have increased less than the cost of living and tenants' income.

Bill Cunningham, another spokesman for CTOC, said the rent board's figures, however, are not accurate because they do not account for the effects of inflation and unemployment increases on income level.

The board's decision may also be illegal because the notice announcing the November 20 and 21 hearing on the rent like proposal was allegedly not specific enough to comply with rent control law and was not printed in any of the foreign languages spoken by non-English speaking tenants in Cambridge, Leary said.

Cohn, who drew up the notice, said. "The notice was extraordinarily detailed and specifically spelled out exactly what we were going to consider.

Leary also said the increase may be illegal because board members met in secret closed meetings to discuss the rent increase.

Cohn, however, denied this. "There never have been any such meetings. It simply hasn't happened." he said.

Leary characterized the increase as "an attempt to give--landlords dollar-for-dollar individual adjustments and it violates the rent control law which says city-wide increases can only be done of a percentage basis."

Cohn said the reason the increases could not be done on a percentage basis is that some landlords would then get too little while others got too much.

"Besides," Cohn said, "the individual adjustment route would take five to ten years and that's obviously ridiculous