Each and every morning, Steven K. Haley, a kitchen employee, and his mother, Maureen, an ID checker, commute from Belmont, Mass., to Currier House.

Until recently, the mother and son-Harvard Dining Services veterans of 25 and 13 years respectively-would spend the early-morning hours searching Cambridge's crowded streets for a place to park.

Finally, last year, they secured a covered spot in a Harvard University lot.

They were the lucky ones.

With a scarcity of parking places in Cambridge, frustrated University employees have few choices. They can apply for a space from Harvard University Parking Services (HUPS), which costs employees up to $625 a year and often requires a wait for availability.

Or they can play a game of chance, taking a city space and hoping that no ticket shows up on the windshield after work.

According to its Web site, HUPS seeks to provide "safe, reliable and convenient parking" for campus workers.

But some of Harvard's staff say they don't do an adequate job.

"There's not much availability," said Steven Haley, whose mother applied for a HUPS space in 1995. "She was on a waiting list for almost a year."

The Haleys could have purchased a permit to park in the Harvard Business School parking lot in Allston much sooner, but they both work in the Quad, a half-hour walk from the B-school. Instead, they waited the year for their spot in the Harvard Press lot, a parking area one block from the Quad.

HUPS officials made no bones about the long waits for specific parking areas.

"If someone is willing to take business school parking they could have it almost immediately," said Ann Honeycutt, manager of parking services. "If they want a smaller lot, they may wait a year. They may wait more than a year."

Steven Haley said while his mother waited for a permit, "she was parking out back to see if she could get away with it."

Parking tickets ended that practice quickly, though.

Other Harvard employees said they have learned much about the streets of Cambridge while trying to find alternatives to Harvard-owned spaces.