Colleges use housing to lure new professors

By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff, 9/7/2003

MEDFORD -- When Awad Halabi was offered a job teaching Middle Eastern history at Tufts University this fall, there were lots of reasons to accept: a strong department, a picturesque campus, and a nearby city rich in culture and intellectual life.

And then Tufts offered a benefit unmatched by many other colleges: a subsidized apartment in a new building full of professors.

"The biggest hassle is trying to find a new place, and to have them accommodate us this way is great," said Halabi, 36, who took the school's offer and moved from Toronto into the apartment this month.

By opening a new, reduced-rent apartment complex for professors, Tufts also opened a new front in a constant struggle for Boston-area colleges: How to attract young professors to one of the most expensive housing markets in North America.

"If you have a choice between two or three universities, and one can promise you a nice apartment at the lower end of the market, it makes it that much more attractive," said Halabi.

Full-time professors may not seem like an underprivileged class, but many find housing increasingly out of reach. In Medford, a beginning professor who might earn $60,000 annually faced a median house price of $323,000 and a median condominium price of $250,000 last year, according to the Warren Group, a real estate information firm. For faculty in Boston and Cambridge, the market is even more extreme: In Cambridge last year, the median price was $587,500 for single-family homes, and $343,750 for condos.

"The closer to Harvard, the more expensive the real estate," said John Petrowsky, an agent at Hammond Real Estate in Cambridge. "A lot of faculty don't necessarily go into single-family homes, because they can't possibly afford it."

Convinced that cheaper housing could help them hire and keep the brightest young professors, a growing number of colleges and universities near Boston and in other high-priced regions nationwide are adding faculty apartments, mortgage programs, and other innovations to help new professors in relocating. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study committee expects to recommend to trustees this fall that they expand the school's mortgage program, which allows faculty to postpone paying interest on their home loans for 10 years.

Last spring, Harvard University opened a new, $40 million condominium complex on Pleasant Street, in the Cambridgeport neighborhood, with 102 units reserved for faculty members. Because Harvard owns the land where the development was built, condos are selling for slightly less than market rates -- but are still in the $300,000 to $400,000 range, a Harvard spokeswoman said.

In the most expensive communities, some colleges have been forced to act. At Wellesley College, trustees voted three years ago to significantly expand the mortgage program to allow tenured faculty to buy a home at the median price in town -- then $650,000 -- with a monthly payment of $1,800 after taxes. The college also owns about 30 homes that it rents at below-market rates to junior faculty.

"For most faculty, purchasing a home in Wellesley was completely impossible," said Phillip Levine, an economics professor who helped draft the revised mortgage program. "This brings it within reason."

Young college faculty who can't afford houses don't elicit the same sympathy and outrage from the general public as firefighters and teachers forced to move far from their jobs. But for universities, faculty housing is a crucial issue -- not just because it affects recruiting, but because a shortage of nearby professors can be a drain on the academic environment.

At MIT, where concern about faculty housing dates back to the 1960s, Provost Robert Brown said rising home prices have forced younger faculty to settle farther from Cambridge, lengthening commutes and limiting time for advising and mentoring students outside of class.

To help address the outward migration, MIT may expand its longstanding mortgage program to allow junior professors to borrow more money, and there is some interest in building apartments for junior faculty. The potential cost of such a project is a challenge for the university, which hires 30 to 50 new faculty members annually, the provost said. With growing demand among faculty for the half-dozen houses Tufts owns and rents near campus, the university decided to invest close to $3 million to buy and renovate a former elementary school on the northwest edge of campus. The university's College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering, which hires 12 to 15 new faculty each year, will spend up to $50,000 a year to subsidize nine units for junior faculty members, most in converted classrooms with high ceilings, hardwood floors, chalkboards, and bookshelves.

Apartments range from one to three bedrooms, and rents start at $1,050 a month. The rates were set just below market levels, factoring in the apartments' new condition and prime location, and using as a baseline rental listings from Tufts' office of off-campus housing, where one-bedroom apartments near campus range from $1,000 to $1,300 a month, said Wayne Bouchard, executive administrative dean for the college.

The idea of cut-rate housing is not without controversy. Some professors see the cheaper rents as a kind of compensation, distributed unequally to faculty willing to live near campus. At Tufts, "our goal is always to try and be fair," said Bouchard, pointing out that the program is still in its early stages. But he also defended the idea as "helping to create the kind of community that's best for our students."

For small colleges with less money to spend, the same rising home prices that frustrate faculty make it harder for administrators to help. In Norton, where the median home price last year was almost $285,000, Wheaton College recently had a chance to scoop up a house near campus. Eager to add options for pressured professors, officials at the small school wanted the property, but couldn't afford it, a spokeswoman said.

Instead, the college is planning to offer land it owns across the street from the college -- at discounted prices -- to professors willing to build their own houses.

Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.