Party animals forced to move from Beacon Hill to North End
By adamg - 10/10/10 - 9:07 am
NorthEndWaterfront.com reports Beacon Hill landlords collectively agreed to stop renting to college students, forcing them to move to the North End, where many landlords don't live in the neighborhood and police are now beefing up patrols Thursday through Saturday nights to deal with the party-hardy crowd. Also:
Crowds of kids stream over from the Faneuil Hall area after in the early morning hours when the bars close.
Comments
Isn't this housing
Isn't this housing discrimination?
According to
According to massfairhousing.org:
In almost all instances it is also against the law to deny anyone housing based on:
• Color
• Sex
• National Origin
• Religion
• Presence of children in the household
• Disability
Further, under Massachusetts law it is illegal to discriminate based on:
• Marital Status
• Age
• Sexual Orientation
• Military or Veteran Status
• Ancestry
• Public Assistance
• Housing subsidies or rental assistance
• Genetic Information
So they should be in the clear. I'm sure they talked to their lawyers first anyway.
I'd say GOOD FOR THEM. College students can ruin a neighborhood and it's nice to see Beacon Hill come together to prevent there encroachment.
I'm all for adding occupation
I'm all for adding occupation to that list--landlords need to be active and enforce rules. If students are breaking the rules of their lease then evict them, but it's bs to bar them from living there. Students are a part of this city
In theory I agree, but most
In theory I agree, but most problem tenants have one year leases. It's difficult and costly to evict someone. The point is to avoid the trouble of dealing with loud and destructive students altogether.
Good point
So, how do you go about predetermining which ones are the loud and destructive ones?
You can refuse to rent to students
It is not illegal to refuse to rent to students. As most undergraduates do not have a full time job, they have no way of proving that they can afford to pay the rent--without having their parents co-sign. Eviction is a costly process in Mass--you can go for the better part of a year without paying and not get evicted--and good luck getting that back rent if you win in court. With the risk of damage, non payment of rent, and the headaches from the neighbors if you get a bad bunch of tenants it is understandable that landlords might not want to rent to students. They biggest incentive for some landlords to rent to students is that they can gouge them on rent and keep security deposits with little or no cause.
Students are indeed a part of Boston, but when universities expand without consideration as to where to house their populations (like Northeastern), the city bears the brunt of costs that were once paid for by the university (campus police, trash, fire, etc). If the city and the residents don't like students in their neighborhoods, they need to work with the Universities and allow more dorms to be built.
I'd say GOOD FOR THEM.
Would you also say, "I'd say GOOD FOR THEM. Black people can ruin a neighborhood and it's nice to see Beacon Hill come together to prevent there encroachment"?
What's the difference?
The difference
When people only ever have to be black for a few years, at their choice, and then they can go back to being white, it will be acceptable to discriminate against black people in housing.
If people were born into being college students, and would remain college students until the day they died, and their children would be college students too, then it would be unacceptable to discriminate against college students in housing.
If you ever get around to writing a science fiction story in which true student ghettos exist - that is, into which all generations of college students are redlined - I hope you'll let us know. I would probably like to read it.
Here's the difference:
People can't change their skin color. They can, however, change their behaviour.
ok so swap out "black" with
ok so swap out "black" with "christian" or "military".... does your logic still hold?
Here's a question, pierce:
Does your logic still hold?
One big exception
If a landlord actually lives in the building, that landlord can be quite picky about who he or she rents the other units to, and decide not to rent to certain people for pretty much any reason. This exception is good in terms of people feeling comfortable in their homes, but I suspect that it also enforced certain "standards" in some neighborhoods for many years.
There are many reasons that people have issues with absentee ownership of rental units, but I wonder how many have to do with having to rent to certain categories on this list?
there are a few exceptions...
... to the owner-occupied exemption. major discrimination laws don't apply only if you have an owner-occupied two-family home. if you have more than one rental unit in your building, the major discrimination laws *do* apply.
in an owner-occupied two family, however, you can discriminate against potential tenants for almost any reason other than race or color.
So...
Could you sell a part share (say 0.001%) of the building to each tenant you like and then discriminate based on owner occupancy?
heh, nope.
it just doesn't work that way :)
As a graduate student, I've
As a graduate student, I've face many landlords who for some reason still view me as a "college student". Despite having lived in the city for three years already, paying my rent on time, receiving a stipend for attending graduate school, some landlords require me to have a co-signer for my lease.
Same here
When I was looking for an apartment for the first time in the area a while ago when I started grad school, I found an apartment in Newton that was somewhat appealing. After talking to the landlord, I was sent an application and a second sheet which talked about a co-signer. I called the landlord up and explained that my graduate program provided me a full stipend and at the age of 23 I was legally able to sign my own lease without needing my parents as a co-signer. The landlord said they require it of all of their "college student" tenants and that they would find another tenant if I refused.
Well, after searching the internet and finding this page on Leon and Shirley Jaffe who were the people I was about to rent from, I was more than happy to let the place go. (I since found a great apartment in Brighton that I've been in ever since and love my landlords who live on the other floor of my 2-family rental...so it worked out for the best).
Sometimes it's just as much the landlord's fault setting up a disaster while chasing easy money as it is the college students. But graduate students are collateral damage in it for the most part.
Before the Web ...
A guy I was acquainted with, a friend of a friend, rented a place in Somerville with some fellow graduate school students from a somewhat notorious land lord. When he and his housemates moved in, they documented the condition of the place with polaroids which they sent to his uncle. Then when they moved out, they did the same.
Then they tried to recoup their security deposit. The landlord then claimed that they left the place a mess, made holes in walls, etc. When they produced the pictures he then said "who is anybody going to believe, me or some stupid students?"
Oh, I failed to mention that this guy and his uncle shared the same last name: Dershowitz.
I'll leave it to the reader to envision what happened next.
He fixed the cable?
...
Good for the police for beefing up late week/weekend patrols.
That's a policy that's long overdue. It's time that these students who insist on being so inconsiderate and disrespectful towards their neighbors by holding loud, wild, drunken parties until all hours of the night were put in their place and forced to grow up some once and for all. It's also up to students who don't cause this sort of trouble to keep the ones who do in line once and for all, too, and yet the colleges and universities in the area could and should do their part in cracking down on out-of-control students.
Weeding out college students
Place the craigslist ad. No phone number, just the anonymous email. Everybody sends a text or a short email asking when they can see it. Ignore it. INstead ask one or two questions about the potential tenant. Be careful of Herzog's list of no-nos. Insist they ask a question about the apt. If the person can manage the email back and forth, maybe once or twice, then offer to show it. Screens out all undergrads, most gradstudents. Works for section 8 and the people who want to know if the refridgerator works too.
Pot...kettle...
Wow. For future reference, your naked elitisim/classism might be better received if you can manage to spell "refrigerator" correctly.
Refrigerator trivia
We discovered (when visiting Harriet Beecher Stowe's house in Hartford) that Refrigerator was the trademark for a brand of iceboxes that were made on Hannover Street (in the North end).
fridge and refrigerator
Gee. You got me caught between fridge and refrigerator. Elitism and classism? Try again. I own a 3 unit building and I clear 3% per year on the capital. That's after depreciation. (Not bad during the Great Recession. Much worse before the valuation tanked.) It's a knife edge. Either I can be very selective. Turn a modest profit. Or I can pick *one* bad tenant. Get reamed by the lost rent, the repairs, the legal costs, the vacany, the illwill from the remaining good tenants. I'd be on section 8 myself if I didn't have these units. Not crying poormouth. Just saying I stay off the dole by steering clear of those on it. And students.
Regulate that.
As someone who is woken up frequently
They NEED to crack down on these college students. I'm not that far out of college myself.. but I work 10 hour days and pay my own rent. Just this week ALONE- I have been woken up about 5 seperate times between the hours of 1:30-3:00 AM. Students drunk and screaming on a Tuesday night, stampeding on the floor above us, yelling in the alleyways. There is clearly NO respect for anyone else around them....