We have no reason to believe that Harvard's record as a landlord is any worse than that of others, and some reason to believe it may be better. The owners and managers of real estate are rarely loved by their tenants, not are they in a business that encurages the most benign and altruistic practices. The Committee is of the opinion, however, that average treatment is not good enough, especially in regard to tenants who are older or burdened with families. We are, and we are judged to be, an institution devoted to humanistic values, and thus accountable to higher standards of conduct than those which prevail among most business firms. And we are an institution especially vulnerable to tenant complaints that arose the sympathy of members of the university. We believe, therefore, that especially enlightened real estate management and relocation practices are required. . . .
We recommend that any future displacement of tenants be accompanied by adequate and timely relocation assistance, including ample notice when the lease is signed that relocation may be necessary, personal assistance in finding other living quarters, and the provision of the equivalent of at least one month's rent to ease the financial burden of moving.
The larger housing question, however, cannot be solved by Harvard alone. Even the problem of relocation will become increasingly difficult as the inflation in Boston and Cambridge rents continues. Nor can the university's contribution to the easing of this problem, especially for older residents living on fixed incomes, be limited to constructing additional housing for Harvard faculty and graduate students. For it seems quite likely that the existence of such new facilities will not simply (if at all) take Harvard personnel out of the Boston or Cambridge housing markets and place them in university buildings, but will in addition lure back to Cambridge and Boston students and faculty now living in the suburbs. Furthermore, existing Harvard housing now occupied by graduate students (such as Peabody Terrace) cannot be opened to non-Harvard residents without substantially increasing rents (even assuming, implausibly, that displacing students in favor of others would solve either group's housing problem). Such student buildings are legally exempt from taxation, though voluntary payments to the city in lieu of taxes are now made. Admitting non-students would terminate the tax exemption, the property taxes to be paid would be larger than the present in-lieu payments, and rents accordingly would have to be raised.
Thus the proper role of the university, in our opinion, is both to increase the supply of housing available for its own faculty and students and to serve as a catalytic agents which will facilitate efforst to increase the local housing supply generally (especially the supply of publicly assisted housing for persons of low and moderate incomes). To these ends, we make the following recommendations:
(1) The university should aggressively seek out appropriate sites within Cambridge on which housing for faculty and students may be built. Wherever possible (and we believe that is is possible), these sites should not now be devoted to residential use. We wish to increase, not simply to redistribute, the supply of housing.
(2) The university should proceed with its plans to build appuroximately 120 units of faculty housing on the Shady Hill site, which it now owns.
(3) We recommend that Harvard join with M.I.T. and other interested groups in urging the City of Cambridge to develop a larger program for publicly assisted housing. . . . It is vital that the supply of low cost housing (especially for the elderly) and of moderate cost housing (for both faculty and community residents) be increased: this cannot be done without joint public-private effort sof a kind and scale not yet attempted in the city. . . . We believe it is possible for the city and the universities to announce, after appropriate study, a joint program to add a certain number of housing units with a five or ten year program. We would like to see the university, as part of this joint program, reconsider whether it might become the sponsor of one or more federally assisted housing programs. The university already owns property along the Charles River that might be the site of a federally subsidized development open to both faculty and non-Harvard citizens.
Hiring Policies
The first requirement is for Harvard, at the highest level, a adopt a comprehensive, affirmative, and specific personnel policy directed especially at the question of recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting of disadvantaged workers. Here, as elsewhere, action has been in response to pressure, but rarely in accord with any policy. . . .
Second, as part of such a policy, the Personnel Office should inaugurate a vigorous and continuing program of recruitment in the poorer neighborhoods (black and Spanish-American) where barriers of discrimination overlaid by the habits of defeatism make economic advancement particularly difficult. Local employment agencies in these areas should be regularly visited and kept well-informed as to job opportunities at Harvard.
Third, the Personnel Office should be encouraged to go forward with a program it now has under consideration for a pre-job and apprentice training program. . . .
Fourth, the university should continue to explore, as it has during the past few months, the possibility of joining with other universities and other large employers in the Boston area to draft a joint agreement that would insure that contractors and trade unions serving those institutions have an affirmative policy toward the hiring of blacks.
Finances
We believe that there are additional opportunities for investments in the community that are within the legitimate educational interests of the university. . . . Unless Harvard is willing to see community residents increasingly angry at the pressures created by the university's presence and its