Word: hre
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...Crimson this spring investigated HRE and found several instances of questionable behavior by HRE officials. They include...
...Paying prices that may have been as much as three times higher than necessary for painting and plastering in one building, 27 Everett St., and then attempting to pass the costs on to the tenants. The city examiner disallowed some of the costs claimed by HRE, shifting the burden for payment to the University. HRE officials say that the costs were reasonable and that work on the building was atypical because there was not enough time to collect bids from contractors...
While Harvard has made major real estate purchases in the past two years--such as a $4 million property along Mt. Auburn Street slated to be the site of an office-luxury housing complex--it is also gaining less obvious footholds in Cambridge. A major HRE objective was to provide housing for personnel affiliated with Harvard, and since 1978 the University has offered long-term six-per-cent interest mortgages to attract faculty to Cambridge. On each property purchased through the Cambridge option plan--and there have been at least three dozen--Harvard retains an option to buy when...
Residential tenants, especially those in rent-controlled buildings, provide the most vocal, objections to HRE policies, in part because they are largely protected from the fear of retaliation by the rent-control bureaucracy. In the past few months, activists in many Harvard buildings have come together form the HTU; and though Silverman says the group will probably "fade away" like small-building groups of the past, Turk says the HTU "has the potential to be substantial and enduring. There is a sense of tapping into a really powerful feeling among Harvard tenants...
...Failing to report to the state division of public charities are required by law that a member of the board of directors--Edward M. Strasser--was also one of the five highest paid consultants to HRE in two consecutive years. Zeckhauser acknowledged that there had been internal discussions about whether it was a conflict of interest to have Strasser on the board of directors and on the payroll; other University officials denied that there was any impropriety in the arrangement...