Roomhunters Storm Straus Hall's Offices

During the first day's operation, yesterday, only five apartment vacancies were received by the Harvard Housing Office at its headquarters in Straus Hall, to handle the steady stream of 100 home-seeking applicants.

Organized to alleviate the present housing crisis by finding living accommodations for married veterans and new students, the agency is expecting to service approximately 1,000 February enrollees and their families. Its work is an expansion of wartime programs of the University Housing Office, formerly of Phillips Brooks House.

The office, which handles rooms and temporary dwellings as well as the desired but virtually unavailable apartments, yesterday rented a total of 100 furnished rooms to married men waiting for permanent homes before transporting their families to Cambridge.

Bender Directs Llaison

Operating under the Counsellor for Veterans, Wilbur J. Bender, and the managerial direction of David D. Hathaway, the new bureau will effect a liaison between property owners and apartment seekers.

In addition to proposed advertising and circularizing, six field workers will work from the office, locating and inspecting premises suitable for student occupation within a 10-mile radius of Harvard Square.

Householders will be advised and assisted in making rental space available and reconverting properties in accordance with zoning laws. Landlords with unoccupied rooms or apartments are being urged to communicate with the Housing Office, open daily from 9 to 5 o'clock.

Straus Hall, dedicated to Isador J. Straus, "loving husband and father; thoughtful doer of kind acts every day" employs a staff of ten workers, including the three who served in the Phillips Brooks House office, and has assumed under its control the PBH file of 500 apartment hunting applicants.