College officials said yesterday that the housing crunch will ease up this semester, since more students are taking time off and Cabot and North House residents assigned to temporary housing last semester have moved into two newly renovated Quad dorms.

All but two of the 12 residential Houses are at or below their target populations for the spring semester, although the projected numbers for Eliot and Winthrop Houses include the upperclassmen currently housed in Wigglesworth, said Housing Officer Lisa M. Colvin.

Although Winthop and Eliot students will continue living in the Yard for the remainder of the school year, the two Winthrop sophomores who lived in the Master's Residence last semester have moved into regular student suites and other crowding within the house has eased, said Kim E. Fraser, the assistant to the master.

Only Cabot and Lowell Houses are officially above their targeted populations, but are not significantly overcrowded, Colvin said.

While seniors moving off-campus to write their these and students taking time off helped ease the crunch, the interhouse transfer system also helped readjust house populations, Colvin said.

This year 17 of the 20 undergraduates who applied to switch houses were able to do so. Last winter, all 17 students who applied for interhouse transfers got their wish. Eight houses accepted new students this year Colvin said.

Students must live in their house for at least two semesters before they may ask to transfer and the great bulk of winter transfer applications usuallycomes from juniors. However, this year marks thefirst time in recent memory that all theapplicants were juniors, Colvin said. Last yearthree seniors transferred houses.

No Place Like Home

The reshuffling stemming from the renovationson Eliot Hall partially caused Cabot House'sovercrowding problems, Colvin said. The 49sophomores who lived in apartments at 29 GardenSt. last semester moved into Eliot Hall overintercession.

Although the newly renovated rooms have beenplagued by small problems such as phone lines thatdo not work and keys that do not match the locks,students living in the Cabot House dorm praisedtheir new home.

All of the new rooms in Eliot Hall are triples,quads and quints with their own bathrooms. Mostsuites have the same number of rooms as residentswhich translates into a large common room with onedouble and several single bedrooms.

"We love the new rooms. We can be a lotlouder," said John Reece '89. Last fall, permanentresidents of 29 Garden St. complained often aboutlate-night noise from the students temporarilyhoused there.

"Our bathroom is so big we could put our bed init," said David J. Schiffman '89.

However, several of the 63 North House studentswho moved from Holmes Hall into renovated rooms inMoors were not so pleased with their newaccommodations.

While the rooms on Moors' second floor arestill singles off a hallway, the upper floors havebeen renovated to create split level suites with acommon room and a bedroom on the first floor andmore bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

Several residents complained that the upperbedrooms are "claustrophobic," with slanted roofsand skylights for windows.

"The common room is too small and there's a lotof wasted space," complained one senior who askednot to be identified. "The bathroom is nice,though. Maybe I should move my bed in there."

One Moors resident complained of a two inchhole in his wall because his window is smallerthan the space it has been put in.

But Susan Livingston, assistant to the NorthHouse master, said, "I've had no complaints sofar. There's always problems with a new buildinglike the toilet doesn't work, but so fareverything has been easily correctable.