New Initiative Builds on Past Housing Innovations

November 11, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Building

Putnam Square Apartments are a joint venture partnership through which Harvard serves 94 elderly and disabled families, ensuring that their rent is no more than 30 percent of their income. Photo by Marc Halevi

The new Harvard University affordable housing partnership builds on an established foundation of support to Boston and Cambridge. In addition to housing 99 percent of its undergraduates and close to 40 percent of its graduate students on campus, the University has worked to support other city housing priorities. Those initiatives and programs include:

• The 1994 sale of 100 housing units to Homeowner’s Rehab, a Cambridge nonprofit housing developer, for approximately 30 percent of market value, at an estimated cost to the University of $5.4 million.

Harvard’s efforts were recognized when Cambridge's Fair Housing Committee selected the University in May 1997 as the winner of its "Innovation in Fair Housing Award" for recognition of Harvard's response to the end of rent control in which it made permanent affordable housing available to Cambridge residents.

A new report examining affordable housing issues in Cambridge and Boston, Opportunities for Partnerships in Affordable Housing, is available online.

• Putnam Square Apartments. Through a joint venture partnership, Harvard serves 94 elderly and disabled families at Putnam Square Apartments, a complex in which tenants pay no more than 30 percent of their income for rent. The University is currently completing a $3 million building renewal program.

• Housing Emergency Loan Program (HELP). In 1985, after the sale of the former "Craigie Arms" mixed-income residential property to a private developer, Harvard established a revolving loan fund of $550,000 (later increased to $712,500) to restore vacant and uninhabitable housing. Managed by the Cambridge Community Development Department, the HELP fund has provided $1.4 million to eight projects involving the rehabilitation of 58 housing units.

• The Riverway at Mission Park. In the mid-1970s Harvard built 775 units of Section 8 housing on 10 acres in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. The mixed-use project also housed a community center, day-care center, swimming pool, senior dining facility, and a computer learning center. Harvard invested considerable resources in a social services program that included a senior center and after- school programs. In September 1999, Harvard transferred ownership of this property to the tenant organization, Roxbury Tenants of Harvard.

For complete background on the Harvard 20/20/2000 review process, findings, and recommendations, refer to the "Opportunities in Affordable Housing" report, available at Harvard University’s Office of Government, Community, and Public Affairs, and on the Internet at http://www.community.harvard.edu.

Affordable Housing Partnerships Established with Host Cities

President Neil L. Rudenstine announced a multifaceted $21 million affordable housing initiative Wednesday (Nov. 10) that will use Harvard's intellectual and fiscal capital to support Cambridge and Boston nonprofit agencies in their efforts to ease the affordable housing shortage. Full Story