Tenants in a University-owned apartment building at 7 Sumner Rd. will file a complaint with the Cambridge Rent Board today charging Harvard with violating a city ordinance restricting renovation of rental property.

The tenants, who have fought the attempts of the University to evict them for more than a year, said they will tell Rent Board examiners that Harvard workers began renovations this week on two units that were occupied when the ordinance went into effect this August. The law, passed in attempt to keep rental property from being converted to other uses, requires developers to obtain a permit from the city before renovating apartments.

Harvard officials, who plan to turn the building into office space for the Graduate School of Design, said yesterday they didn't know if renovations had begun. "I know nothing about the schedule of the repair work," Louis A. Armistead, acting assistant vice president for community affairs, said yesterday.

Sally Zeckhauser, president of Harvard Real Estate Inc., said the University has concentrated in the past on renovating units that were vacant in August, and hence not covered by the legislation.

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Tenants complained yesterday that workmen worked on lighting and wiring in Apartment 1 in the 16-unit building. When the ordinance, which faces a court test later this winter, went into effect, a tenant lived in the room, another tenant, Bernice Rogowitz, said yesterday.

"They've actually gone into all the vacant units," Donald Cohen, another tenant, said.

The University first mailed tenants in the building eviction notices last December. Six of sixteen tenants remain in the building.

Rent Board official James Romeika said yesterday the board's docket is now filled with cases, but added that "there's a possibility I can work out a hearing before

Rogowitz and Cohen said they feared the preliminary hearing on the case might not come until January. "If that is true, it really makes me wonder about the Rent Board's commitment to enforcing this law," City Councilor-elect David Sullivan, who drafted the ordinance, said yesterday.

Sullivan added that he may hold hearings on ways to speed up Rent Board procedure when he takes office in January.