Riverside Group Opposes Harvard's Housing Plans

A fight appears to be shaping up between University officials and the Reverside Planning Team over Harvard's housing plans for the predominantly black Riverside area of Cambridge.

Mrs. Saundra Graham, president of the planning team, expressed dissatisfaction and anger last Sunday about the latest round of negotiations a week ago between her group and Edward S. Gruson, assistant to President Pusey for Community Affairs. She said that the planning team would organize a demonstration of Riverside residents for its next meeting with Harvard, which will probably take place within two weeks.

The group is demanding that Harvard supply the area with at least 150 units of low-cost, low-rise housing to lessen the impact of Harvard's physical expansion into Riverside, which borders on Mather House and Peabody Terrace. Harvard has voiced verbal agreement with the demand and is currently seeking to acquire a site for the housing.

Contention

The major point of contention is the choosing of a developer for the housing. Gruson has pledged that the developer-who will plan the cost, size, and number of the housing units-will be chosen mutually by Harvard and the planning team. But the group is skeptical of Harvard's failure to sign any binding agreement on the choosing of a developer or any other aspect of the proposed housing.

"Since when do they make verbal business deals?" Mrs. Graham said. "They always have everything in black and white."

The Riverside group began its campaign against Harvard officials last June, when they staged an overnight "tent-in" in the Yard and seized the speakers' platform at the following day's Commencement ceremonies.

Two Corporation members who have the University's final authority in housing matters-George F. Bennett '33 and Albert L. Nickerson '33-then stepped out of Commencement ceremonies with the demonstrators to discuss their original demand: that Harvard set aside the Treeland site adjoining Peabody Terrace for low-income housing.

At a stormy negotiating session which followed, Bennett told the group that the Treeland site was "too valuable to support practical low-income housing." He said that Harvard was tentatively planning to use the site instead for student housing, and that the University would build resident housing elsewhere in Riverside.

The University also agreed to report back to the planning team by last week, when Gruson told them only that Harvard was still in the process of finding an alternate site.

"Until we get that with community control of the housing, we are standing firm with Treeland," Mrs. Graham said. 'If they don't build for us, they don't build for themselves, and I mean it."