Morton Bloomfield, a faculty tenant at 13 Kirkland Place, said that he considered the renting arrangement a "perquisite of the job."

"After all, Harvard pays its top professors somewhat lower salaries than other good universities," Bloomfield said. "The houses are something Harvard offers instead."

Jerome A. Cohen, a faculty tenant at 21 Bryant St., sold his $35,000 home near the University of California at Berkeley when he decided to come to Harvard. Cohen said he could not find a comparable home in Cambridge for the same price.

He said that when he sold the Berkeley home and moved to Cambridge, he told his friends it seemed like he was "selling a house and getting a bicycle."

The high price of real estate in Cambridge has hampered the recruiting efforts of some Harvard departments, administrators said, and neither Administration officials nor faculty members deny that Harvard uses the houses to recruit sought-after personnel. Peterson said that University-owned housing provides hiring flexibility in its search for faculty members.

One disadvantage in renting from the University, many tenants said, is the poor maintenance done on the houses. Repair work for most of the faculty homes is performed by Hunneman Realtors.

Burnham, Hunneman's property manager for Cambridge, said there is no written policy regarding what maintenance should be done by the realtor and what left to the tenants.

"In general," he said, "all exterior maintenance [grounds keeping] is to be performed by the individual tenant."

Burnham said normal wear and tear on the houses is repaired by Hunneman, which in turn bills the University for the work. He said many problems, such as exterior painting and tree trimming, are in a nebulous area with neither the tenant nor the realtor clearly responsible for the maintenance.

Trim the Trees

John Karefa-Smart, visiting professor of International Health, lived until recently at 14 Scott St., renting the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $450 a month. He estimated the house's value at over $80,000.

"We were grateful the University had a house when we needed it," Karefa-Smart said, but "the maintenance was so-so. The trees were never trimmed, leaving the living room so dark we could not use it without lights except in the winter."

"The realtor came right away for little things, but never came to fix problems with the stove," Karefa-Smart said.

One of the most impressive-looking houses--with a sloping lawn and well-trimmed hedges--is used by Richard Zeckhauser, professor of Political Economy, who lives at 138 Irving St.

Although he declined to discuss the rent or value of the house, Zeckhauser said he thinks the rent is equitable. "I do a fair amount of work such as painting to maintain the house," he said. Hunneman does the major repair jobs, Zeckhauser said.