A few weeks ago a note appeared under the door of our Hill House apartment. A group of students, describing themselves as “concerned,” wanted to inform us that the college was buying the remaining tenants of Hill House out of their apartments in the coming year. The note told the story of one elderly tenant in particular, whose husband had died recently and who depended heavily on the relatively low rent-controlled fees she was paying to remain in Hill House. She, and the students who spoke to her, were worried that she would have difficulties finding a new apartment that was both satisfactory and affordable.
Karen Lawrence cleared things up when she issued a letter to the Sarah Lawrence community via email on October 7th. Lawrence suggested that plans have been in the making, or at least on the periphery of the college’s agenda, since the school bought the building at 1225 Midland Avenue in 2001. The college guaranteed the tenants who chose to remain at that time that their leases would not be ended for at least five years. Now, seven years have gone by and the college is offering the remaining tenants relocation assistance as well as what Lawrence vaguely refers to as a “substantial cash incentive” if they agree to relocate by June 2009.
A second note appeared under our door early last week. The concerned students, who were at this point aligning themselves with the Solidarity Club on campus, were still very much concerned—perhaps even more so, given what they saw as an evasion of eviction rhetoric on the part of Karen Lawrence. The second note urged students to refer to the buy-outs as an eviction, and to fully acknowledge the bad connotations that go along with such language.
Semantics! The Hill House buy-outs are an eviction in the same way that animal euthanasia is murder; technically speaking, of course, the college is expelling these residents from their homes. Technically speaking, the college is using its legal authority and ownership of the building to override the tenants’ own residential autonomy. But is this really something worth complaining about given, on the one hand, the admirable efforts that the college is making to alleviate the pain of relocating, and on the other hand, the complicated circumstances out of which this housing crisis originally arose? The college does need more room, as Lawrence points out in her letter, not just for student residences but for offices and college spaces as well. And if we trust that the cash incentive is indeed substantial, isn’t the school putting these tenants in the best possible position in spite of the inevitable trouble they will have to go to, that we will all have to go to, in order to shift ourselves around and make room for growth?
So go ahead—refer to the housing situation as an eviction, but try to recognize that this particular eviction is the next step in the natural progression of Sarah Lawrence’s preservation. After all, it would be ridiculous if the college, faced with a housing shortage, spent money on additional space instead of using the Hill House apartments that it technically already owns. Nobody, least of all Karen Lawrence, is trying to deny that Sarah Lawrence’s lack of funding is a bad, troubling thing. Theoretically, in fact, she’s doing something to change that. In the meantime, however, the school is going to have to make due with the hand it’s been dealt and sacrifice what has heretofore been a friendly co-existence with our elderly neighbors in Hill House. Not having money sucks for the institution just as much as it sucks for the individual.