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Town, Gown Face Housing Shortage

Cambridge is putting the pressure on Harvard to house more graduate students in University-owned buildings in order to free up housing units for local residents facing rising rents.

Complying with a City Council request, representatives from the University appeared before Cambridge's Housing and Development Committee last night to describe Harvard's impact on the city's current housing shortage.

The hearing followed a meeting this week in which councillors explored ways to extract more taxes from the University.

Three Harvard officials appeared before the council to present a "housing impact statement," which includes statistics on how many students are currently competing for space in the Cambridge housing market.

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The council requested the statements from both Harvard and MIT because of a concern that students were further constricting what is already a tight housing market. Students compete for space with low-income Cantabrigians who have been increasingly driven out of the city after the end of rent control in 1996.

Harvard houses 60 percent of its total student body (including graduate students) in University-owned housing, a higher proportion than any other Boston-area university, according to Mary Power, Harvard's director of community relations.

However, while Harvard reportedly houses 99 percent of its undergraduate students, only 38 percent of graduate students live in Harvard-owned property. It is the 3,197 graduate students competing for Cambridge housing that councillors said they are concerned about.

Harvard's report last night discussed the possibility of constructing more graduate housing facilities, proposing a new building with room for 418 beds on the corner of Soldiers Field Road and Western Avenue in Allston.

Vice Mayor Anthony D. Galluccio said the construction of new buildings by Harvard would be as contentious as the current competition for affordable housing by students.

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