Word: landlordism
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...doubtful that any other landlord in Cambridge could have afforded to badger the Rent Control Board so persistently and for so long. One member of the board, who, ironically, supports landlord's rights, went so far as to label Harvard's pressure--legal and otherwise--as "a form of extortion." As the city's biggest landowner, the University must face up to the existence of one of the nation's toughest rent control policies. It should begin to live by the policies honestly instead of trying to circumvent them through legally questionable channels...
...this is done completely within the law, but the policy reeks of bad faith with the people of Cambridge. When these two and three-unit dwellings are taken off the rent control market, the tenant is no longer protected from a landlord, presumably a faculty member, who wishes to lack up the monthly rent at his own whim. Many low and moderate income Cantabrigians can't afford these inevitable rent increases. And since it takes months to find affordable housing in Cambridge, technicians, teachers and yes, even some of Harvard's own graduate students will be pushed right...
Harvard as an institution, by contrast, has not always followed this example--as is amply demonstrated by its deplorable behavior as a Cambridge landlord, or it foisting of a costly power plant on the people of Mission Hill. To the University's credit, though, the last few years have seen marked improvement in its willingness to back up materially its professed ideals of service to society. Last year the Law School set aside some money for students wishing to pursue low paying public service work during the summer, rather than the prices corporate work so many seek. The Medical School...
...rent strike, which Lindsey by now headed, began working. When the strikers cited 200 building-code violations in one block, the city authorities did nothing, so the strikers got the state to bring the landlord to heel. To get more trash collections, the strikers trucked garbage downtown and left it to rot in the sun. Says Lindsey: "People were taking things into their own hands, and that generated a lot of excitement...
...Moreover, the city of Los Angeles had passed a resolution saying that not one cent of municipal funds could be spent on the Games. The first week Ueberroth and his tiny staff were locked out of their small new office. They could hear the phones ringing inside. But the landlord, like most of the rest of the town, was sure the Olympics would lose money and not pay its bills...