Tenants of the Craigie Apartments will have to wait until after the city elections to contest Harvard's plans to remove the building from the Cambridge housing market.

The rent board yesterday postponed a hearing--scheduled, after four months of delay, for October 28--on the University's request for a set of removal permits required before rent-controlled apartments may be converted to any other use.

The Craigie tenants' association originally complained to the rent board six months ago that Harvard had converted one apartment to an office and had purposely kept several others vacant after tenants moved out.

Meredith Scammell, president of the tenants' association, said yesterday that in the past few months Harvard has converted another apartment and has now left a total of 26 empty.

Harvard has maintained that it needs removal permits for the 60 apartments at the corner of Mt. Auburn Street and University Road because the building requires major structural repairs that cannot be performed while tenants continue to live there.

The University has told the rent board that the apartments will eventually be returned to the housing market. But tenants' association members said they are concerned that when the renovations are completed, the current tenants may not be able to afford large rent hikes charged to cover the cost of the repairs.

"The effect could be that we'll be priced right out of the market," Scammell said, adding that in continuing to postpone the hearing the rent board is not responding to tenants' needs.

But Lewis A. Armistead, assistant to the vice president for government and community affairs, said yesterday that the latest postponement was granted only because Harvard's attorney in the Craigie case has been summoned out of town.