In the wake of unprecedented overcrowding in the residential Houses, the College has begun considering a variety of way to make off-campus housing a more attractive option for undergraduates.

Most of the proposals are aimed at boosting the allure of Dudley House, the campus center for the advising and counseling of students who either decline or fail to qualify for rooms in the 12 traditional Houses.

Dudley House has become a particular concern for officials besieged with complaints from students who transfer to Harvard from other colleges and often find themselves lacking the support provided within the residential House system.

Transfer students can only move into the residential Houses when space becomes available--through student leaves or others moving off-campus--and are left without assurances as to when they may get rooms.

Discussion of transfer student concerns, as well as methods to encourage more students to live off campus was a focus of attention yesterday for the student-faculty Committee on Housing, which is expected to continue deliberations on the issue over the next several months.

All-Time High

The committee's new discussions come nearly two years after it passed a series of proposals attempting to ease overcrowding by diminishing the role Dudley House played in the lives of nonresident undergraduates. Believing that more students would opt to move off campus if they could retain affiliation with their original House, then-members of the committee acted to relax rules that forced nonresidents to become Dudley affiliates.

Since then, predictions that Dudley House would diminish in size have proved correct, with some estimates putting the current size of the House at half the level it was two years ago. Now, with overcrowding and transfer student worries still major concerns, officials are looking to Dudley House as a possible solution to and no longer a cause of the difficulties.

The committee yesterday heard the recommendations of several of its members who have looked into the problems of nonresidential life and the related issue of alleviating on-campus crowding. Policy changes they suggested included.

*requiring that all transfer students, now given the option of moving into a residential House as space allows, be affiliated with Dudley House for at least one year;

*reserving University-owned area apartments for use by transfer students waiting for on-campus spaces;

*providing financial incentives, in particular reducing facilities fees, for students moving off campus and

*holding more comprehensive orientation programs, skin to Freshman Week activities, for transfer students.

Committee members made no decisions on any of these options, deferring judgment indefinitely. College observers and several Undergraduate Council members are understood to believe, however, that sentiment is growing for some solution to the related issues of overcrowding, off-campus life and Dudley House.

"An attractive Dudley House may be the solution to the housing problem," committee member Mark Nielsen '86 said yesterday.