Harvard's decision to hire SSI is "extra proof" that his job performance is up to Harvard's standards, Abramian says.

"If I were a bad man, SSI wouldn't keep me," he says.

When at Harvard, Abramian could take classes at the University--where he was enrolled as a "special student"--for a nominal fee of 10 percent of tuition.

Now he says he works overtime through SSI to pay his tuition at Northeastern, where he is studying for a master's degree in comparative government and international relations.

He finds he still doesn't make enough to pay for adequate housing or to study full-time.

"He's spending every penny he has trying to get the education he was getting originally," says John G. Swomley, one of Abramian's attorneys in the case.

Abramian has no family in the United States and has not told any of his relatives in Russia that he is homeless. They would wonder, he says, why he bothered to come to America just to be homeless.