Rent Board Reorganization Progresses

A four-month-old effort to substantially reorganize and improve the operations of the city's rent control board is proceeding well. Cambridge officials said yesterday, adding that the campaign is making a dent in the agency's massive backlog of cases.

Following the September report of a special commission appointed by Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci to examine the rent board, which has been heavily criticized in the past for ineffectiveness, the city has hired several new staff members to streamline its adjudication process.

As a result, rent board administrators hope to eliminate the agency's backlog. which currently stands at about 300 cases with the average time necessary to settle each more than four months.

"We had some basic structural problems that heeded to be addressed," said Rent Board Executive Director Roger Mervis "We're making a fair amount or progress."

But Mervis, who was hired less than two months after the special commission filed its report, said that it would take at least one year for all the recommendations to be implemented. He added that the report was "a package," with all the recommendations necessary to achieve full benefits.

Since November the rent board has hired specialists to handle rent adjustment cases and to assist landlords and tenants in filing with the agency. The special commission found that a major reason for the rent board's plodding processing was the burden on its hearing examiners to deal with these two areas.

In addition, the city has also hired a second assistant director to manage the rent board's new computer system and a legal counsel to work exclusively on the agency's court cases.

Calling the backlog "the single most important problem we are facing." Mervis said the additional staff are allowing the rent board to slowly cut into it.

Careful Hiring

City Councillor David E. Sullivan, a careful observer of the agency's operations, said yesterday the success the rent board has had thus far is a combined result of the commission's recommendations and City Manager Robert W. Healy's careful appointments of Mervis and other key administrators.

In addition to new staff, the rent board has set out to rewrite its forms and pamphlets to answer complaints that the city's rent control ordinances are inaccessible to most landlords and tenants.

The agency has also begun public assistance sessions on Wednesday nights.

Chief Hearing Examiner Margaret Turner said yesterday that problems with the rent board are not new, but adds that the special commission's report "highlighted the problems and strengthened our claim that we needed additional resources."

Bruce T. Eisenhut, a senior hearing examiner, agreed with Turner. The recommendations, he said, "are now being followed through with."