HRE Affiliate Housing Set for July Rent Hike

Harvard Real Estate's (HRE) announcement of its annual rent increases on 1700 apartments for graduate students and other University affiliates prompted angry responses yesterday from supporters of strict rent control laws.

The new rents amount to an average increase of 6 percent and will take effect July 1, said HRE Vice President Nancy E. Kossan.

HRE computes the yearly increase to bring rents to a "fair market" level and takes into account variations in location, size, utility service and other factors, Kossan said.

But Michael H. Turk, co-chair of the Cambridge Tenants Union, said the term "fair market rent" is misleading because Harvard owns so much property in Cambridge. "They're creating the market they claim to be following," he said.

"I have very strong objections to this whole procedure," he said. "In this city, market rates are much too high."

City Councillor William H. Walsh, the council's most vocal critic of rent control, said HRE uses "a very mysterious formula" to determine the increases and that he has repeatedly "urged the rent control board to look into the situation."

Walsh said rents in Harvard affiliate housing were 50 percent higher than comparable rent-controlled apartments. "If it were any other landlord in Cambridge," he said, "there would be a criminal complaint."

A Faculty Advisory Committee on Affiliated Housing reviews the annual rent increases, which are determined by analyzing the rents of about 11,000 local apartments.

Kossan said that a tenant has two weeks to ask the committee to reconsider a rent increase. Last year the committee received only three complaints, she said.

But Turk dismissed the paucity of tenant complaints, saying, "I don't think that's any measure of people's happiness or whether those rates are fair."