Even as final returns confirmed the narrow victory margin of a state ballot initiative to abolish rent control, Cambridge city officials vowed to fight to preserve some semblance of rent limits.

Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves '72 met yesterday with state Rep. Charles Flaherty (D-Cambridge), speaker of the house of representatives, to discuss options the city can take to preserve a form of rent control, the mayor told. the Crimson last night. Rent control has been the law in Cambridge since 1970.

"This is the worst thing that has happened in this city in a quarter of a century," Reeves said. "Unless the worst features of Question 9 are modified, people will be displaced because the rents will double or more than double."

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, 51 percent of Massachusetts ballots had been cast in favor of the initiative, Question 9, according to the Associated Press.

Question 9 will prohibit rent control in the state, effective January 1. But the measure affects only Cambridge, Boston and Brookline--the three communities in Massachusetts with rent control.

In a statement yesterday, Cambridge City Manager Robert W. Healy said he will present "alternative ways [in which] the City could remain engaged in preserving diversity and equity in the regulation of rents, while dealing with the transitional issues caused by the passage of Question 9."

Healy will present proposed home-rule petitions which ask the state legislature to allow some form of rent control in Cambridge. The petitions will be offered at a public hearing of the Cambridge City Council's rent control committee and the housing and community development committee today at 5 p.m.

In addition, the city has set up a telephone hotline for tenants in Cambridge's 14,415 rent-controlled units, which constitutes more than one-third of all the city's apartments. The number is 349-INFO.

Healy said Question 9 "creates very difficult problems" for the city. "The abrupt climination of rent control would cause great hardship for many people and undoubtedly have far reaching and unpredictable impacts on the character and diversity of our community."

But the city manager cautiously stopped short of saying the city will seek a reinstatement of some form of rent control.

Mayor Reeves, however, declared the city will go all out to preserve rent control, the housing program which began in Cambridge in 1970. "We will try to see if we can save as much rent control as we can," he said last night.

Cambridge has several options.

The city might petition the state legislature to restore rent control as its currently exists or approve a new system with reforms.

The city could also petition the legislature to set up a vacancy decontrol program. Such an effort would permit elderly tenants to pay below-market rents until they voluntarily vacate the unit, when it would then be de-controlled.

On Monday, the city council voted 5-4 to again reject a proposal to provide elderly and low- and moderate-income tenants with rent subsidies.

The five councillors who voted against Councillor Michael A. Sullivan's proposal deemed it premature. But in next Monday's meeting, a similar order will almost certainly be reintroduced.