Tenants said they were also unsure whether the repairs would be finished. The back wall is still untouched, other than the continuing crumble of bricks to the ground.

"The settlement was a containment," Ramseur said. "We found a way of keeping them at bay," Michael Turk, a tenant, said.

"I think it's really behind us, and I don't foresee any problems," Wade said. "I feel we're all friends," she added. The negotiations were on a level of "mutual respect," she said.

Turk said Harvard Real Estate treated us like "peons." Daniel Polvere, attorney for Harvard Real Estate, said at the examiner's hearing that he found meetings with tenants "distasteful." And Jack Feeney, a former superintendent for the buildings, reportedly told a tenant that Hunneman asked him "not to talk with residents."

Tenants accused Harvard of trying to intimidate them with their vast financial resources.

Zeckhauser described the whole situation as "a learning experience." Harvard Real Estate learned "not only from the special adjustment process," she said, "but also learned a lot about tenant relations."

The tenants have also learned much from the experience. One tenant said he now saw how the legal process favors the landlord, requiring tenants to miss days of work in order to organize and file litigation.

Ramseur said he saw the settlement not just as a victory for tenants in these buildings, but as "a victory for all Harvard tenants, and the tenants on Mission Hill and Cambridge Port who are resisting Harvard expansion. This victory shows that organized tenants can win against Harvard."

The tenants in this story did. For seven months they tried to persuade their landlord to correct 125 health code violations in their building.

Their struggle is not over.

Seven ceilings had collapsed--four in one year--with with holes spanning up to two feet wide.