Housing Riverside

IN A FAR corner of the Adams House Dining Hall a bearded student is telling three of his cleaner cut friends that "the goddamn university should quit giving money to stupid things like housing in Riverside. After all," he says, eyes popping out behind a pair of $40 oval tortoise-shell glasses, "What right does that bunch of freeloaders have to take money away from important scholarship going on here?" At the same table, perhaps two chairs down, sits a blonde-haired girl whose freshly laundered Can't Bust 'Em coveralls just don't seem to live with her golden bangles and black Guccis. She listens attentively to tortoise-shell, then turns to a friend and says, "Jesus Christ, what a fucking pig...but...where is Riverside?"

A good question. It is highly unlikely that more than ten per cent of the Harvard community have any idea of just what or where Riverside is. And in a sad, strange way that is part of the problem which has seen the entire Riverside community ripped apart in the last few years. Riverside-roughly bordered by Mass Ave., Memorial Drive. Boylston Street, and Western Ave. -was once a thriving community where black and white people lived together in relative harmony. As one old resident put it. "Back about fifteen years ago, the whole community consisted of three and four generation families; now it's nothing but a bunch of rich students living there." What has happened over the years has been a clear reflection of the attitude of the University as a whole (students and administration alike, though the point should be made that the administration, in this case, is in a unique position to mold student involvement) towards the community. The University has gradually increased its enrollment, thereby forcing large numbers of students into the already crowded Cambridge housing market. At the same time, its buildings have gradually expanded down the Charles River toward Boston, high-rise after high-rise being built in a purported effort to house all of the University's students.

Somehow that objective has not been reached, and more and more students have been forced to live in the Riverside community. What happens, as these large numbers of students continue to glut the market, is that real estate speculators become increasingly willing to pay outrageous prices for family houses, knowing that the return on the buildings, if rented to students, would be nothing short of phenomenal. The owner soon discovers that he can make anywhere from two to four times more by renting to students. In one example, a house on Hughes St. was being rented at about $80 a month until the owner decided that he could make more money by renting to students. It has been a real success story-he is now receiving over $300 for the same house from a group of five students.

AND ONE of the most bitter complaints of the residents is that the students are the very same ones who are claiming to be "socially aware" and "involved" in numerous causes. As Saundra Graham, president of the Riverside Planning Team, which has been working steadily to halt deterioration of the neighborhood, says, "Some of these white middle-class people decide to make the scene here in Cambridge-whether or not they're going to school-so they get together in large groups, pool all the money their parents are doling out to them, and then pay the huge rents which the real estate speculators are demanding. Naturally there are very few families in this community who can pay the kind of money some of these so-called radicals can. In the end, like always, it is the black community which suffers the brunt of all this . . . these people, when they've finished playing revolution can always go home to mom-especially if they run out of money. We don't have that option."

To a large degree, the problem is students. . .not students like the tortoise-shelled racist, but rather, everyday sort of liberal students (and a large helping of radically chic ones, too). The student is plucked out of his own community (which in an ever-increasing number of cases tends to be some place like Short Hills or Greenwich or Passaic), shipped like a piece of prime beef (yes, prime) and dumped in a great tower of learning whose only relationship to the community is either as land developer or slumlord. The student remains entirely isolated from the thousands of real people who live and play and work outside the walls of Harvard. Throughout his stay he is very much a stranger to the community which is theoretically his home nine months out of the year. Consequently he has no conception of the problems besetting the community, and thus is unable to act in defense of the community. He has no ties, and thus no obligation to the community.

THE Administration, which is in the long run responsible for this sense of community isolation, has made some attempt to alleviate the housing situation in Riverside. The Wilson Report stated two years ago that the University should act as the catalyst in procuring land, a developer, and federal funds for low-income housing. To this end, it has begun construction of 120 units for the elderly at the corner of Mt. Auburn Street and Putnam Ave., and is well along in the plans for 80-100 units of low-income housing at the Howard Street site. And while the Blair Pond and Shady Hill sites for low-income and student housing have been temporarily shelved, the Treeland-Bindery project for Faculty-student housing is just beginning to get underway. Although the low-income projects are essentially good ones, it is naive to think that they will come anywhere near solving the housing crunch. Particularly foolish is the conception that more Faculty-student housing will somehow eliminate student pressure in the housing market. And it is patently absurd to use up 1.6 more acres in the Riverside area (as in the Treeland-Bindery site) for more student housing, when it will neither eliminate Harvard students living in the area nor provide more housing for area residents.

In the end, the only real solution to the housing problem in Cambridge-and the only means of saving what's left of the Riverside neighborhood-is through the gradual decrease in the total enrollment of the University to a level commensurate with the actual dormitory space in the University, and a greatly intensified low-income housing program. And since it is highly unlikely that the Administration will ever advocate such a stand itself, it is imperative that students apply as much pressure as is necessary to see that the great search for truth does not continue violently oppressing the community.