See You in Court

For once Harvard has played right into the city Rent Control Board's hands.

By refusing to hand over documents relating to the University-owned Craigie Arms apartment building, Harvard this week gave the rent board its first opportunity to test its power to force all Cambridge landlords to make a full disclosure of relevant materials when seeking to remove apartments from the city housing market.

The rent board unanimously decided Wednesday night to take Harvard to Third District Court early next week in order to obtain documents that the Craigie Arms tenants association says are necessary to fight the University's plans to evict them to make way for drastic renovations within the building.

"It's fortunate that Harvard is choosing to secrete some of the documentation in this case," city councilor David Sullivan, one of the strongest supporters of the city's anti-condominium conversion ordinances, said this week. "It may set an important precedent that landlords will have to make a full disclosure," he added.

A set of stringent city codes prohibits landlords from removing rent-controlled apartemnts from the Cambridge housing market without receiving special removal permits from the rent control board.

The Craigie Arms tenants association this week convinced the rent board that without obtaining Harvard studies of plumbing, electrical wiring, and other maintenance reports on the 64 rental units at 122 Mt. Auburn St., the tenants now remaining in the building would not be able to successfully defend themselves against eviction.

In a four-page report written Wednesday, a rent control hearing examiner familiar with Harvard's application for removal permits called the right of the tenants to see the documents "a fundamental matter of due process."