Housing Role Of University Is Criticized

Elderly Cambridge residents Saturday blamed Harvard as an institution as well as Harvard students living off-campus for contributing to skyrocketing rents in the City.

At a housing convention in St. Mary's Hall, sponsored by the Cambridge Econocim Opportunity Committee, nearly 800 persons showed up to pass scores of resolutions aimed at keeping down their rent.

Harvard, M.I.T., and "other large institutions" were criticized for "land grabing" and for not participating in low-cost housing programs.

Students living off-campus were criticized for driving older residents out of the City because students living in communal apartments--with four or five of them contributing to the rent--can afford to pay more than a single family requiring the same space.

The residents at the convention passed resolutions demanding:

* that universities build enough oncampus housing for all their students and faculty.

* that they desist from acquiring existing buildings in the City.

* that they publish a list of all their land holdings, including land held by "straws" or dummy subsidiary corporations.

* that they make 25 per cent of their residential housing inventory available to the Leased Housing Program--a program to provide low-rent housing for senior citizens under present federal laws. (Harvard and M.I.T. have participated only nominally in this program).

Also passed was a resolution directed at students living off-campus--"There shall be no rental of a housing unit or units whose occupants shall number four or more having no kinship."

Finally, the convention called for rent controls to prevent landlords from raising the rent.

The convention--complete with noisemakers and red, white, and blue bunting, and quotes from FDR, Eisenhower, and LBJ on big placards on the walls--was the culmination of three-months' work by neighborhood caucuses.

The resolutions passed Saturday will now be presented to federal, state, and local officials, who will decide whether to enact them into law.