Eviction Roxbury Tenants

THE RELATIONSHIP between Harvard and its tenants in Roxbury has repeatedly changed complexion since the University informed these tenan?s 1? months ago that they were to be evicted to make way for hospital construction near the Medical School, Instead of behaving as defensively as they had last April when questioned about their plans for the medical area. Harvard officials now acknowledge in principle that they bear a degree of responsibility toward the people whom they will dislocate. And the tenants, who once demanded that the University allow their homes to stand and seek other locations for its teaching hospitals, are now disposed to accept a??ern??? housing if Harvard is willing to provide it.

At this time, however, the most salient feature about Harvard's treatment of its tenants is that after almost a year of h??rings, promises and negotiations, the University has neither produced a relocation plan for its tenants nor approved tenant proposals for building alternate housing. Since tenant eviction in the medical area may begin as early as two years from January (similar projects have taken at least two-and-a-half to three years), the procedure of approving a housing plan, finding an architect and developer, and constructing the project itself becomes increasingly harrowing for people who more distin??ly face the possibility of unmitigated displacement with each passing day.

To be sure, the University has promised repeatedly that there will be no evictions before comparable nearby relocation housing has been provided for the tenants. But the tenants' association has been wary of Harvard's assurances to them, and their wariness has not been without foundation. For seven months last summer and fall, community and tenant spokesmen participated in sessions of the Medical School's Community Relations Committee, which Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, had set up to "guide" University decision-making with respect to institutional expansion in Roxbury. This committee approved and reiterated proposals that Harvard adequately maintain and repair safety hazards in tenants' apartments, and that it immediately rent other vacant homes in the area to prevent an already fragmented res?den??l community from failing hopelessly apart?. Yet it was not until last month-eight months after the recommendation-that Harvard completed a safety survey of its medical area apartments and began to act on the committee's recommendation of hazard repair and rental of vacant-homes.

In addition, a subcommittee of this body had unanimo?sly approved tenant proposals for relocation guidelines. These proposals stated that the tenants would "participate in the decision-making of all phases of the planning and execution" of new housing, and that the issue of tenant management would be taken up by the subcommittee with tenants retaining a voting majority. But at the committee meeting which was to consider these proposals, the committee chairman read a letter from Ebert which stated that the committee would disband in favor of a Corporation-appointed individual who would exercise the University's final authority in negotiations with the tenants.

FOUR MONTHS later, and in the absence of this appointment. Corporation officials themselves began to negotiate behind closed doors with tenant spokesmen last month. The basis of these negotiations was a tenant proposal for tenant-owned and managed low cost housing. Under this plan. Harvard would lease the tenants' association a ten-acre site at the rate of 81 per year for the development of a 400-unit low and moderate income housing project. The University would help to procure federal funding for the low-income portion of the project and a guarantee of mortgage under federal housing law, by which the cost of the project would gradually be paid back from tenant rents. In addition, Harvard would agree to allow much of the area surrounding the project to remain a residential community with accompanying commercial and educational facilities.

Much of this proposal, if approved, would not seriously conflict with the expressed desire of the University and other institutions' to proceed with further medical construction in Roxbury. In fact, the portions of the proposal which involve federal subsidies point to a situation in which Harvard would be minimally obliged and inconvenienced in the construction of low-cost relocation housing. But the proposal that Harvard set aside several acres of land adjoining the Medical School for residential purposes is likely to have met with reticence on the part of Corporation officials engaged in negotiations with tenants. Although these officials have declined comment on the progress of these negotiations, it is conceivable that they view the "land use" portion of the proposal as highly inimical to their own institutional goals and may be extremely reluctant to approve it.

Further, it continues to appear uncertain that the medical institution for which these homes were originally scheduled to be torn down-the Affiliated Hospitals Center (AHC)-will succeed in bettering the deficiencies in local medical care that now plague the Roxbury area. Several months ago, the governing board of the AHC announced that a 46 per cent cutback would be made in its outpatient ambulatory care budget. With this cutback, medical authorities contend, the capacity of community health care in the new hospital is presently reduced to the already inadequate level of care which existing area institutions now maintain. AHC spokesmen have alleged for several months that new medical techniques are being developed to make more meaningful the presently contemplated allocations for community care. But the AHC still has not come forward with new community care proposals, and the implementation of such proposals continues to remain a matter of theory.

Tenant relocation in the medical area is still highly uncertain, and the construction of medical institutions in place of destroyed homes has far from demonstrated itself to be a just and worthwhile social venture. In their struggle for relocation housing and improved medical care, Harvard's tenants in Roxbury may find it extremely difficult to achieve their goals by negotiating with Corporation officials behind closed doors.