8 Arrested In Cambridge Rent Fight

An eviction-served despite the Cambridge City Council's Monday night ban on eviction of tenants who fail to pay their November rentsended in violence yesterday morning.

Herbert Brazao, a Watentown landlord, attempted to evict William Cunningham, active in the Cambridge Tenants Organizing Committee (CTOC), from his Cambridge apartment.

"The landlord wants me out," Cunningham said. "There are personal reasons now, but the original issue arose because he wants to be able to raise the rents every year and won't renew my lease."

The CTOC had expected the eviction notice, and were prepared for a confrontation when the moving van appeared on Putnam Avenue shortly after 8 a. m.

As a scuffle developed, attending deputies called in a detail of police. "There were 50 people and almost as many cops. We were badly mismatched," William Costley, one of the demonstrators, said.

The confrontation resulted in a partial, though temporary, victory for Cunningham. Movers returned his furniture to the apartment, but police proceeded to arrest him and seven sympathizers on charges of assault and battery on a policeman and rude and disorderly conduct.

"We'll all be found guilty at the January trial. We'll be hit for a bad price on our 'bad' behavior. Rent control isn't real; we'll never see rent control. We're real; we're showing what tenants have to do, but they're trying to break our leadership," Costley, one of the eight arrested, said.

Hunneman Realty, manager of much of Harvard's property, also manages Brazao's apartment. "It would be foolish to say that Brazao is a slum lord and therefore should be removed from Hunneman's list because Harvard is one, too," Cunningham said.

Picket, Rally Monday

The CTOC plans to picket City Hall on Monday from 4 to 6:30 p. m. At 7 p. m. they will stage a rally at the City Council hearing on rent control guidelines. "This phony hearing is probably only a front for raising rents another ten per cent," Cunningham said.