Housing Crunch: Grad Students Face a Tough Housing Market with Few University Funds

When Robert O. Krikorian says "We're not asking for a handout, we're not asking for a free ride. We just want some help," his plea may sound familiar to Cambridge residents accustomed to ducking the homeless in Harvard Square.

But Krikorian is not living on the streets just outside Harvard's gates; he is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, with a dissertation in the works and office space at 6 Divinity Ave.

As co-president of the Graduate Student Council, Krikorian picks up the patois as he recounts the housing woes of students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

According to a study released last Thursday by the Massachusetts Office of Administration and Finance, state housing costs are rising at a rate twice the national average, and the housing squeeze is particularly tight in Cambridge and Boston.

Since rent control and eviction protections laws were dropped in 1996, prices in a free market have soared far beyond the reach of many residents, creating a smaller crisis among GSAS students who must survive through the five or six years it typically takes to complete their dissertations. They live on University stipends in the pricey world of Cambridge and Somerville housing.

As the growing costs of living near work begin to tax the budgets of graduate students, many student leaders say the consequences for Harvard may be broad, even extending to the quality of undergraduate education.

Housing Options

Graduate students have three options if they want to live near campus. They can accept on-campus housing and live in one of four dorms. Alternately, they can rent Harvard-affiliated apartments. Or they can try their hand in the private real estate market.

The cheapest options, by far, are the graduate student dorms just north of the Law School campus. A small, 142-square foot single in Child or Richards Hall rents for only $351 a month for the academic year. The most expensive suites, which have two rooms are only $563 dollars.

But graduate students, many of whom are married and have started families, find little allure in dorm life.

When Kenneth J. Halpern, a lawyer, decided to come to GSAS to complete his Ph.D., dorms were not an option.

"At my age, the thought of living in a dorm was not a thinkable thought," Halpern said.

Instead, he found an apartment near Davis Square in Somerville. Many other graduate students have found the renting scene tolerable close to Harvard.

Irving C. Johnson, a third-year graduate student who is studying social anthropology, moved from the graduate dorms to Somerville after one year.

"After one year in the dorms, you want to leave," Chan said. "The food is bad and there isn't any privacy." He moved to Somerville, and was lucky enough to find an apartment that he now shares with four friends.

But over the past few years, stories like Johnson's and Halpern's have become rare, as prices in the once-affordable Somerville have risen.

"I'm shocked myself at the prices," said Carla J. Chaplin, a rental consultant for the Dewolfe's Cambridge real estate firm.

"One landlord had some families living in six two-bedroom apartments for eight to nine hundred a month five years ago," Chaplin says. "Now, they're up to 1,400 and that's happening everywhere. I don't know where regular people are supposed to live anymore."

Graduate students also have the option of obtaining one of the 2,300 rental apartments within one mile of Harvard Yard that are owned by Harvard and run through Harvard Planning and Real Estate (HPRE). But these apartments are rented at market value, with no discount for Harvard students.

"For graduate students [HPRE] is a point of contention because they charge the fair market price," says Lisa L. Lauterbach, a co-president of the Graduate Student Council. "HPRE feels that subsidies are at type of financial aid they aren't obligated to distribute."

And the many who can't tolerate another year in dorms or who can't afford an apartment near Harvard must move further away.

Many land in Watertown and Allston, but some spread out to as far away as Jamaica Plain in Boston, or even to Fitchburg.

The Graduate Student Council administers a discount MBTA fare program for these far-flung commuters, and this year, the number of enrollees had doubled as more and more graduate students must commute from their distant homes.

The Money Comes Rollin' In

Even taking such drastic measures to reduce the costs of housing, many graduate say they still cannot pay their bills with a stipend provided to them buy the University.

Although details vary from department to department, most students on financial aid receive substantial tuition assistance for the first two years of study. Though students still get some aid in their latter years at the University, many must find a new source of income to keep pace.

"After that you start work as a teaching fellow to pay for your tuition and apartment," Johnson said.

One-third of all GSAS students currently work as teaching fellows (TFs), and as housing prices rise, they often feel financial pressure to overextend themselves.

"Teaching in more than one class at one time is an enormous time commitment," says Lauterbach. "One should spend 10 hours of prep time for every hour in section, but in reality for me, it is more like 15 to 20 hours of prep.

Her estimates of the amount of prep time are on par with most others given by graduate students and administrators.

Taking on two classes adds as much as thirty hours a week of work on top of a graduate student's own research.

The Committee on Graduate Education urges GSAS students in its TF handbook to "ensure that such teaching does not impede progress toward the degree," but as the amount of work outstrips these graduate students' ability to keep up, either their preparation for sections or their research is likely to suffer, students say.

"If grad students are teaching five sections to pay their rent, they are just not going to be effective as teachers," Lauterbach says.

And the experience was familiar to Johnson, as well. "I know people who TF one class at Harvard and one at BU," he said. "It's just too much work."

Dreams Deterred

Not all graduate students will tolerate the difficulties of trying to find housing near Harvard on a Harvard budget.

According Lauterbach, the high cost of living and the low pay of GSAS often deter the best candidates from Harvard.

"The reasons you'll turn down acceptance to GSAS is either because you've been accepted by one of the poorer departments, or you get a package somewhere else you can't refuse."

But given Harvard's enormous wealth, this financial obstacle to education leaves many GSAS students frustrated.

"To me, it's unacceptable that the richest university in the world is losing some of its best students because it cannot mitigate their financial problems somewhat," Lauterbach said.

Yet, despite all of the trouble they face, no substantial protests have been lodged by the graduate students.

As graduate students at other schools began to unionize after the practice was approved from the National Labor Relations Board last April, GSAS student leaders told The Crimson that there was no compelling reason for them to join their counterparts in collective bargaining. Most everything, they said, was well.

By Lauterbach's estimate, GSAS students will weather the housing crisis with the same resolve that keeps them at school through the six or seven years it takes to complete a humanities Ph.D.

"They may get into a bad situation, but they don't have the luxury or the wherewithal to take time away from their studies," she said. "They'll suck it up for six years."