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Members of the anti-rent control Small Property Owners' Association (SPOA) said yesterday they planned to picket Harvard to protest the involvement of law students in tenant advocacy cases.
SPOA Co-Chair John F. Natale said that his group resents what it sees as "one-sided" activities by Students for Public Interest Law (SPIL) in cases before the city's Rent Control Board. SPIL, a part of the Law School's clinical studies program, provides free legal aid to tenants in many cases but does not represent landlords.
"The tenant is presumed by them to be defenseless and right," Natale said. "And the owner is presumed to be wealthy and mean. We are assumed to be the bad guys."
Natale said his group will "raise eternal hell" if Harvard does not close SPIL or force it to provide representation for landlords as well as tenants. Protest measures SPOA has considered include picketing the campus and disrupting next spring's Commencement exercises, Natale said.
In addition, SPOA members might refuse to rent property to Harvard affiliates, he said.
"We insist if SPIL is to continue to exist--and we would prefer that it dissolve and go away--that students sit on the side of the owners at the same time," Natale said. "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more, and we're absolutely dead serious about that."
SPIL Co-Chair MaryJeanette Dee, a second-year law student, said she was unaware of SPOA's complaints, but that the group is unlikely to alter its pro-tenant stance.
Limited Resources
Although SPIL members have discussed the idea of extending their legal assistance to landlords, Dee said that the group's limited resources make such a scheme unworkable. And by representing property owners, she said, the group would lose its effectiveness as tenant advocates.
"We are restricted by the size of our budget and student interest," said Dee. "And there's a conflict of interest problem, in that every time we represented a landlord, it would cancel out all their tenants so that we couldn't represent them."
Dee added that SPIL was founded as a tenant advocacy group, and that a change of focus would "fundamentally alter the nature of the group."
But Sally Ackerman-Eaton, a former member of the Rent Control Board, said that SPIL's policies are fundamentally biased.
"Property owners are just ordinary Joes who just happen to own a house," Ackerman-Eaton said. "It's naive for lawyers to say clients are good or bad based on whether they are tenants of landlords."
"If Harvard's paying for one class of people to get free legal advice, they should either subsidize groups to represent landlords or tell students to change the group," Ackerman-Eaton said.
But Dee said SPIL's goal is not to "be unfair to owners or skew the system in favor of tenants," but to "help the rent control system go smoothly."
Landlords can usually afford to represent themselves or to weather the hearings without legal assistance, Dee said.
"It is the exception that a landlord is a person who cannot afford representation," Dee said. "And even a small landlord has experience going down to the Rent Control Board. A tenant is less likely to have experience in that."
Increasingly Political
During the past year, SPOA has played an increasingly active role in city politics. In recent weeks, the group has picketed city council meetings, urging passage of the anti-rent control referendum known as Proposition 1-2-3 and opposing the liberal Cambridge Civic Association, which currently holds a four-member minority on the council.
Should the University fail to address SPIL's role in the city, SPOA will pursue a policy of "opposing Harvard in everything they try to do before the City Council," Natale said.
"We're trying to make life politically difficult in the city for Harvard," Natale said. "We'll oppose Harvard...with respect to the status of their rent control-exempt affiliated housing, the money they pay the city in lieu of taxes and their land acquisitions."
Natale said SPOA Co-Chair David P. Sullivan has met with Harvard administrators--including Director of Community Relations Marilyn Lyng O'Connell--whom he described as "sympathetic" to the group's complaint. But he said that Daniel L. Greenberg, the Law School's director of clinical programs, was less receptive.
"We damn near picketed the Harvard graduation as a result of that attitude," Natale said. "but David [Sullivan] received a promise that we would be satisfied...But it hasn't happened yet."
Natale said Sullivan Plans to meet with Harvard officials again in early November.
He said the group will hold off on protest activity until after the City Council elections in November.
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