Rent Board Official Advises Allowing Sumner Eviction

A city rent board official this weekend brought the two-year old battle over a Sumner Rd. apartment building one step closer to its increasingly inevitable end when she recommended that Harvard be granted certificates of eviction for the two apartments where tenants remain.

If the full Rent Board follows the recommendation and grants the certificates later this month, as it seems very likely to do, the University will need only permits from Middlesex district court before they can force Sherwin Cooper and Carol Nelson to leave their apartments at 7 Sumner Rd.

Cooper and Nelson were among the 16 tenants in the four-story brick house in January 1979, when Graduate School Design first sent out eviction notices with the idea of converting the building to office space.

They fought the University to the bitter end in a battle that climaxed in December when the city's Rent Control Board voted unanimously to grant Harvard the permits necessary to convert the offices.

Cooper and Nelson weren't satisfied with the verdict, though, and went to the board with a long list of complaints last month. They alleged that they hadn't been notified of the hearing--a complaint the board dismissed--and that Harvard had failed to find them new apartments and inadequately maintained their homes at Sumner Rd.

"They didn't present any defenses that were cognizable," Penn Moulton, the hearing examiner that turned down the tenants request that the eviction certificates not be granted, said yesterday.

Moulton explained that the board's December decision to grant the removal permits--a decision that drew the wrath of Cambridge tenant activists--had basically tied her hands.

"The Rent Board won't, I feel, have any choice but to grant Harvard the eviction certificates," she added. A date has not yet been set for the full board hearing on the case, but it will probably take place later this month, sources within the department said.

Once the board approves the eviction certificates, court approval is likely to be "pretty much a pro forma matter," Moulton said, though she added that "occasionally" the court does not rubber-stamp rent board decisions.

If the eviction certificates are finally granted, Harvard may find itself in a delicate position if the tenants still refuse to move out. Cooper and Nelson were unavailable for comment yesterday, but Cooper has said in the past that he intended to continue his fight "right through to the end."

Harvard spokesman Lewis A. Armistead said yesterday he thought the tenants "would be cooperative. I think they understand the situation," he added.

"We've been in touch with both of them, and offered them other Harvard housing," Armistead said, adding that the University's current requests for eviction permits were "simply the administrative side of following through on the removal permit process."