Heads May Roll

HOW COULD A French Queen suggest that starving peasants should eat cake? Obviously because she had no desire to come to grips with her subjects' pressing needs. The unnecessary result was that the Parissiennes rapidly came to grips with her.

How can top administrators at Harvard Real Estate suggest that the University maintains "generally satisfactory" relations with its tenants? Simply because HRE officials have no desire to improve communications with their own fiefdom. In this case the result may be the strengthening of a nascent union designed to protect tenants' rights.

For months now, HRE, which manages Harvard's properties, has been engaged in protracted disputes with several small groups of tenants. At the Craigie Arms building on Mt. Auburn St., residents charged that Harvard violated Cambridge rent control codes; at 9-13a Ware St. tenants complained of trespassing by HRE workmen who are installing expensive new windows against the tenants' will; and at 8 Plympton St., tenants forced the rent board to correct overcharges in rent by HRE. Involved in each of these cases and several others were members of the Harvard Tenants' Union (HTU), a group with representatives in all of the University's major properties which celebrated its first anniversary last month.

Since its inception HTU has warned that HRE officials have fallen out of touch with tenants' day-to-day concerns. Only recently, one main source of HRE's lack of understanding became apparent. Top HRE administrators received pay hikes last year of up to $17,000 each--increases larger than the total salaries of many Harvard tenants. HRE President Sally Zeckhauser now earns more than $65,000 annually, and her assistants, Vice President Robert Silverman and Treasurer S. Michael Hawe, each take home more than $49,000. While tenants called the hikes "astounding" and expressed resentment that Harvard finds money for higher salaries but not for needed repairs to properties, the increases may benefit HTU in the long run by fueling tenants' urge to organize.

So far the tenants' union has had limited success in representing residents of University apartments. With about 40 highly active members and several hundred who have indicated some support. HTU has managed to foster a greater awareness of tenants' rights. The key stumbling block to further progress has been HRE's staunch refusal to recognize the union as legitimate representative of even some of its tenants. In a recent letter to HTU Coordinator Michael Turk. Zeckhauser stated that "it is the policy of Harvard Real Estate. Inc to respond to specific complaints and suggestions from specific tenants about their individual units and building common areas affecting them." Although Turk's own letter to Zeckhauser sent her response to Turk's personal apartment. As far as HRE is concerned, the tenants' union simply does not exist.

HRE "hopes that we go away," Turk says. Just to make sure, HRE is trying to hasten the union's departure--a signal that perhaps HTU is beginning to have some small effect on Harvard's decision-making process. HRE has sent an employee to spy on a tenants' meeting, threatened at least one HTU activist with eviction, and broken out the heavy legal artillery to fight tenants at 8 Plympton St. who have been receiving assistance from Turk. At a recent rent control board meeting, HRE attorney Daniel Polvere filed an abnormally long--20 page--brief for Harvard, and stated that the rent board would open a "Pandora's box" of possible tenant complaints by siding against the University. HRE officials apparently believe it is time to make a decisive stand against the nascent tenants' union.

ATHOUGH HRE seems to be employing classic anti-union strategies, Harvard has also shown that it can be pressured into dealing with more than one "specific tenant" at a time. At the Craigie Arms apartments where HTU members have also played a leading role, the University has for more than two months been negotiating with about two dozen residents fighting HRE's attempt to convert the building into luxury housing. In return for moving out, the Craigie tenants are seeking future guarantees about Harvard's commitment to low and moderate-income housing. Apparently Harvard's "policy" of ignoring tenant groups is no more than a strategy that HRE believes is most likely to curb tenant input into decisions involving the University's massive housing stock--one of the largest held by any Cambridge landlord.

So far HTU members have been totally foreclosed from offering constructive suggestions to HRE administrators. The most blatant instance of disregard for tenants' efforts to contribute to the improvement of their homes came last May, when HTU released the results of a comprehensive energy-use survey of Harvard-owned buildings. Designed to identify inexpensive means of reducing energy waste, the survey was never formally acknowledged by Harvard. It is fairly easy to understand why HRE administrators would resent off-the-cuff tenant gripes, but it is far more difficult to explain how HRE could close its eyes to a well-researched and carefully documented study that could cut costs for both landlord and tenant.

Difficult, that is, but not impossible. Instead of adopting any of the relatively inexpensive energy-saving remedies proposed by HTU. Harvard has opted in several buildings to install specialized, high-priced "thermopane" windows. After repairs such as the windows installations are completed. HRE has typically taken advantage of rent control guidelines that allow landlords to raise tenants' rents on the basis of capital improvements. The end result is a significant rent hike for tenants and higher profits for HRE.

Zeckhauser's letter to Turk indicates that in cases of disputes between tenants and Harvard, "we have found that tenants' rights and interests were adequately protected by local and state laws administered by a variety of governmental agencies." In other words, HRE officials have taken the posture of the crafty used car salesman who tells his customer attempting to return a lemon: If you don't like it, sue me. Unfortunately for tenants, who have nowhere near the financial resources necessary to combat Harvard's stable of lawyers, fighting the University in court is like going on safari holding a rifle filled with blanks. You can shoot all you want and still not hit a single target.

What the University would probably like to do most of all, in fact, is divert HTU members from their organizing efforts with a proliferation of unwinnable legal distractions. It seems likely, however, that HTU members will continue their own strategy of making new allies by providing assistance to residents of buildings involved in disputes with Harvard. If the University refuses to deviate from its obstinate failure to address legitimate resident concerns, HTU can only benefit from the resulting dissatisfaction among tenants. A tenants' revolution may be a long way off for HRE, but then again, Marie Antoinette got plenty of advance warning and still lost her head.