Rent Control Vigil to Be Held Today

A coalition of community and student groups will hold a vigil in front of Holyoke Center this evening to protest Harvard Planning and Real Estate's refusal to sell all its formerly rent controlled property to tenants or the city at below market press.

Organizers of the vigil say they hope to win support for an Oct. 24 resolution passed by the Cambridge City Council recommending that Harvard divest itself of all its formerly rent-controlled property.

"We hope that we can bring to everyone's attention that Harvard is eroding the communities in which it resides," said Jo Anne Preston, co-chair of the Agassiz Tenants Union, which represents tenants in the Peabody and Agassiz neighborhoods.

Harvard, which currently owns five percent of Cambridge's formerly rent-controlled apartment units, plans to raise the rent of 600 units and to rent vacant units only to Harvard affiliates. Harvard has volunteered to set aside 10 percent of its units for low income tenants. Community leaders, however, have maintained that the 10 percent figure is too low.

"These neighborhoods are especially vulnerable with the end of rent control. Because of their proximity to Harvard Square and to Harvard, rents in these neighborhoods have as much as doubled," said Preston, whose organization represents the neighborhoods immediately northwest of Harvard.

The coalition supporting the vigil includes the Agassiz Tenants Union, the Eviction Free Zone, the Cambridge Tenants Senate as well as the Harvard student groups Harvard Community for Affordable Housing (HCAH), the Committee on Housing Rights (a Phillips Brooks House organization), the Progressive Action Network (PAN) and Education for Action.

Eviction Free Zone organizer Stephen Meacham, who attended the Phillips Brooks House rally in Harvard Yard yesterday, said he sees a parallel between the PBH rally and this evening's planned vigil. "The same rationale which leads Harvard to sit on its students leads them to respond to the city council in the way that they did," Meecham said.

The vigil is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.