A Tale of Two Cities

HARVARD STUDENTS ARE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT their housing "problems." They want to get out of the Quad, or they want new hallmates. But there's another critical housing situation that Harvard continues to turn its back on, and that's the lack of adequate and affordable housing for the rest of Cambridge.

When homeless men began to congregate on heating grates outside of McKinlock Hall last January, the University installed metal barriers over the grates on the coldest night of the year. Unfortunately, administrators had to learn the hard way that problems which affect the community at large also impact Harvard, and in this case, Leverett House. And so the grates soon came off.

Since that time, however, the University has neglected to make a concerted, institutional response to the specific problem of homelessness in the City of Cambridge. Although Harvard cannot be expected to solve the all the problems of urban poverty, it can lend a helping hand in its capacity as the city's largest property owner, landlord and number one corporate citizen.

In the past year alone, the Harvard administration's insensitivity to the critical shortage of housing in Cambridge has become all too apparent. One block away from Leverett House, for instance, stands a church-owned parking lot which the University plans to lease to build student dormitories. Adams House Co-Master Jana Kiely proposed that Harvard lease the land, satisfy its own housing needs, and then set aside a portion for homeless families and a center for socially-concerned students.

But the Kiely plan was rebuffed because Harvard wants the whole parcel for itself. Citing the Harvard Corporation's supposed reluctance to fund a community-oriented project in the Square, President Derek C. Bok himself brushed off the unique plan to convert this property into some sort of mixed-income housing complex with local, state and federal funding. Ironically, the St. Paul's parking lot stands in the midst of a neighborhood in which Harvard has destroyed more than 70 homes in the last 40 years to make way for dormitories.

Another sore spot between Harvard and Cambridge is the city's 15-year-old policy of regulating rents for 17,000 residential apartments. Ever since the city placed at least 900 Harvard-owned apartment units under the rent control system, the University has made no secret of its desire to challenge Cambridge's housing laws in court.

But Cantabs are quickly learning how to combat Harvard's selfish manipulation of the housing market. In last November's municipal elections, 50 percent of Cambridge's voters told Harvard Real Estate, Inc. (HRE) to stop selling rent-controlled buildings to professors on a priority basis. Because of owner-occupancy rules, Harvard's house sales only serve to decontrol apartments reserved for low-income tenants.

At a University-owned building across from Wigglesworth Hall, it took HRE at least three months to issue an eviction notice to a tenant using his rent-controlled apartment for commercial purposes. Regardless of an upcoming decision from the Cambridge Rent Control Board on whether Harvard broke the law in the case of 1306 Mass. Ave., the University can be blamed for keeping a low-income apartment off an already-tight housing market. In a city where the turnover rate is less than 2 percent annually, that's criminal.

In more recent action down at City Hall this spring, a first-term city councilor has offered a series of scandalous proposals which would weaken, if not destroy, rent control and Cambridge's method of providing low-cost housing to its neediest citizens. Throughout the whole legislative debate, however, Harvard's large legislative lobbying staff was conspicuously quiet on the matter--and no wonder, given the University's poor track record on rent control.

The relationship between Harvard and Cambridge should not be a tale of two cities, a story of the haves and the have nots. For the marriage between town and academic gown cannot last another 350 years if Cambridge's largest institution stands in isolation from the rest of the city.