Tenants of 8 Mellon St. Sign Lease With Harvard

After having served two eviction notices to the nine tenants of 8 Mellon St., the University yesterday signed a new lease with them. Both sides said the lease--the product of two months of negotiations--is fair.

The lease provides for a scaled rent increase from $400 to approximately $725 per month. Lorraine Wade, assistant director of marketing for the Harvard Real Estate Company, said yesterday the rent on 8 Mellon St. has not been increased for about ten years. The Rent Control Board approved the hike, she added.

The lease also specifies the identities of the building's tenants. Previously, 8 Mellon St. had been leased to World Student Housing Inc. (WSH). A lawyer retained by the University found WSH was not a corporation. Current tenants of the building have said they believed former tenants had incorporated the organization.

The tenants must now notify the University when someone moves out or in. The University must also approve new tenants. "It's a normal landlord-tenant relationship," Wade said, adding the University will check potential tenants' credit and personal references.

Responsibility for the maintenance of the building has been clarified, Wade said. The University will take care of minor repairs and the tenants of smaller ones.

"It seems pretty fair," Rochelle Didier, a tenant of the building, said yesterday, adding the lease will "give both sides peace of mind."

The relationship between Harvard and 8 Millon St. has previously been strained. Harvard served the first eviction notice late last year. After some controversy and heated discussion, the Rent Control Board decided the notice was illegal, since the tenents had been living at 8 Mellon St. for an average of more than two weeks and were thus protected by rent control laws. The board had to approve their eviction.

Harvard officials said they did not know how long each tenant lived in the building and thought the notice was legal. On January 16 the University served a second notice in the language and format required by the Rent Control board, listing, as did the first, three grounds for eviction-- misrepresentation of tenancy, damage to property and the desire of the University to convert the building into a four-to-five family apartment unit.

However, the wish to convert a building into a family unit is not sufficient grounds for eviction under rent control law.

Sally Zeckhauser, president of Harvard Real Estate Company, said earlier this year she thought the other two grounds were sufficient, but added the tenants corrected the misrepresentation and repaired the damage. The tenants contested the extent of the damage, most of which they said was fixed before the second notice was served