Ware St. Tenants Continue Protest of HRE Repairs

Tenants at a Harvard owned building on Ware St. are continuing their efforts to deny University workmen access to their apartments and one resident has field a court complaint charging Harvard Real Estate (HRE) with trespassing.

The tenants charge that HRE's plan to replace existing windows at the 9-13A Ware St. building with high-cost, energy-saving thermopane windows will raise rents unfairly. Because the work is being done in the wintertime, it may also create a health hazard. Robert Epstein, a spokesman for the 47-member group, said recently.

Peter Baldwin, a Harvard graduate student, field criminal charges against HRE on February 10, accusing the University of trespassing after workmen entered his apartment and replaced windows there despite a "keep-out" notice posted on his door frame.

The court rejected Baldwin's criminal petition, but he said that he plans to begin a civil suit against HRE this week.

HRE Vice President Robert Silverman said Friday that Harvard lawyers consider the entry of the Ware St. apartments legal. He explained that "nearly 50 percent" of the window replacements have been completed and that he has so far received no complaints about illness due to cold weather from the building's 100 tenants.

Silverman added that HRE field a petition on January 8 with the Cambridge Rent Control Board to increase the rents at the Ware St. apartments.

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The Harvard Tenants Union (HTU)--which claims to represent a "majority" of the tenants in the rent-controlled apartment buildings that Harvard owns cited the thermopane window controversy as indicative of HRE's general attitude toward tenants in a letter sent to HRE president Sally Zeckhauser last week.

The HTU letter criticized HRE's refusal to publicly disclose plans for improving Harvard-owned buildings, and described HRE's actions in dealing with the Ware St. tenants as "heavy-handed."

HTU member Meredith Scammell said last week that HRE's refusal to negotiate with the tenants as a group "sets up an adversarial relationship where one need not exist."

Zeckhauser said last week that HRE does not recognize HTU an legitimate representatives of Harvard tenants.