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City approves measure to bust up big student apartments
By adamg on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 3:47pm
The Boston Zoning Commission voted unanimously today to limit apartments to no more than four unrelated college students.
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According to swirrlygirl
According to swirrlygirl this may prevent future deaths, and would have prevented the death of Liquarry Jefferson.
Crowded Houses
They aren't just for students.
That kid died, in part, because he lived in what amounted to a flophouse and some of those floppers left guns around where unsupervised children could get at them. There was an uncontrolled situation with people floating into and out of the household, kids got a hold of guns because of that uncontrolled situation, and a kid is dead because of that uncontrolled situation. The fact that all of them shared at least some of their chromosomes doesn't make - or shouldn't make - any difference.
If they are going to go after students in this silly ineffecient way (2br = 4, 2200 sq ft 5 br = limit 4), maybe they should be looking at the total number of people and the number of off-lease people living in apartments regardless of relationship. Your "profession" should not have anything to do with the law.
And Liquarry Jeferson's
And Liquarry Jeferson's mother would have obeyed a city ordinance regulating the number of people residing in her apartment?
I didn't know they still made blue laws!
I'm curious about how this may effect someone renting a five bedroom Victorian house in JP, Lower Allston, etc. Does this mean they have to keep the fifth bedroom empty? If the house is big enough, this ruling really isn't fair. It's probably not legal, anyway. It's not the City's business whether legit tenants are in or out of college or related to one another. That's just crazy. I bet there are more intelligent ways to enforce more sensible housing codes, but that would be too difficult.
The key word is
The key word is "unrelated"
there are living groups of five or more people that have fewer than four unrelated people in them.
Like that family of 8 or 9 in a 2br apartment
With six kids sleeping around a wonky space heater.
Now there are two fewer kids.
I don't remember such crowding in student apartments being linked to as many fatalities.
(note: I'm not advocating that families be forced to have larger places that they can't afford. Jefferson's death and the deaths of the two kids in a fire are a result of crowding that resulted from poverty. Student crowding also results from high housing costs on and off campus.)
What is a college student?
Is it full-time undergraduates? What about a part-time undergraduate? What about grad students? What if you work full time and go to college?
Suppose there are five college students living together and one drops out of college. Now, there are four college students and one drop-out do-nothing schlub. That's legal, right?
Heh. All I can do is laugh at the absurdity of this limit.
after witnessing the condition of apartments around BC...
I have zero sympathy for the landlords and realtors on this one. What passes for "student housing" in the free market is absolutely shocking; these landlords that are so pissed haven't put a dime into most of these places since the 70's except the bare minimum...and they're raking in the dough hand over fist.
PS:The next time a "realtor" shows you an apartment, ask for their business card. If they make an excuse about running out of cards- they're not realtors and the reason they don't have a card is because they're operating illegally. Report them.
Not that "realtor" is a profession which requires, or has benefitted from, legislation: they're still the slimy hyenas of capitalism.
Defining the Problems
Students are any unrelated household members who go to school.
The infractions will be complaint-driven and handled by the city's inspection people.
In other words, go back to what you were doing and don't piss off your neighbors and you'll be fine.
Sheesh, you'd think they had a switch downtown that would ultimately open the floor up underneath some of you people and automatically deposit you on the street...and yet, most of you are complaining not for your own living situation but some make-believe household with 10 straight-A students (9 of which are just taking a continuing learning credit at the community college but you fear they'll be counted as students too without any human intervention as to their status within the law!) who all run a soup kitchen down the street in Allston living in a 40 room apartment (so there's no crowding issues) and when this law is enacted they'll all be out in packs of 3s and 4s sucking up the last 3 apartments in Brighton (putting them too far away to help their old community's homeless!) causing a massive panic on rent pricing (as if the price point isn't already astronomical enough to keep the most needy out of decent housing already!)...
Get a grip.
In That Case...
It's nice to know that Councilor Ross, City Council, and the Zoning Board have all wasted their and our time on a law that won't be enforced and won't really help.
That's my analysis
Harumph! We're doing something important! Passing legislation! Harumph! Whaaat? Enforcement? Oh, that's somebody else's problem. Harumph!
As if students tell landlords 'Oh, and there will be five of us here. Is that a problem?'
Yup, the councilors are just posing.
Why this isn't just posturing
The landlord is going to be more vigilant about whether there's 5 or not coming in. He won't want to lose his ability to lease his property. That's where this comes in. It takes problematic party apartment fights away from police (likely to significantly reduce their repeat calls for problem addresses) and landlords (who don't like to evict paying customers) and puts it on housing inspectors (only if problems are reported) and landlords (before problems occur).
Before this passed, someone near one of these places would need to complain about the tenants to police (at the time of the incident) and the landlord (to get the situation corrected). Often bad landlords aren't responsive to problems like that because they're not behooved to the people next door only to the people paying them to live 5+ wide in a single place.
Now, someone near one of these places calls the inspector to complain about the situation (the next day) and the landlord will have to deal with the inspector marking his apartment as not meeting zoning/code at which point eviction is forced upon tenants unless the landlord gets his act together and corrects the situation and has it reinspected.
This forces deadbeat landlords to deal with the situations they foist onto the neighbors. It relieves police from always going some of the same party houses (if they ever got there at all with all of their other more important calls).
Subdivisions
Get ready for a new wave of housing splits. Can't get 6 students in 1200 sq ft? How about four in each of two 600 sq ft units!
Shorter Politicians: I AM DOING SOMETHING I AM DOING SOMETHING
(can't be enforced ... SHHH I AM DOING SOMETHING SHHH SHHH!)
Again, why go after students specifically? Just about every 20 something I know and many 30 somethings take classes at night ... are they going to be evicted? Graduate students too, despite their different age and rigorous requirements for staying on target?
I play the Nanny State card here!
Reading comprehension ftw!
I said: The infractions will be complaint-driven and handled by the city's inspection people.
You reply: Again, why go after students specifically? Just about every 20 something I know and many 30 somethings take classes at night ... are they going to be evicted?
I don't know if they will. Do they bother their neighbors?
Most of the overcrowded family scenarios lamented above don't bother their neighbors. They could have 6 people in the same bed and this law would never affect them. My next door neighbors have people in their basement that likely doesn't meet tenability requirements, but they're nice people so I don't complain (and I have no facts, just a hunch, to say it doesn't meet code).
Also, unless your 1200 sq ft scenario above also has room for a second kitchen and bathroom, it can't be rented as two separate units.
Finally, sure all current zoning and laws might handle every one of the problem situations this proposal is aimed to improve, but then you have to have police witness the problem, maybe even regularly file some charges against the tenants, you need a landlord to force the eviction (noisy parties isn't a zoning crime), and you have so many other hurdles to clear before a notoriously problematic dorm...ahem, apartment...is cleared out. Then, the next 6 students move in on a new lease and you return to fight anew.
Now, you can request a zoning inspector to examine the living situation if you have a problem with dorm...ahem, apartment...parties. The city can evict based on a zoning violation without needing the landlord. The landlord runs a risk if he wants to set the place up as a 6 student party house again.
Landlords will be forced to act more concerned about the neighborhoods their renting in. Unruly students won't be able to pack into the same house and easily turn a night at home into a wild noise-fest. Residents will have a new option to improve quality of life than hoping the police are not too busy enough to come and investigate a noise complaint.
You mean your reading comprehension?
Telling someone they can't understand you because you don't like the point they made isn't very polite.
The point is that this law would seem to outlaw a group of graduate students living together just for living together. Oh, right but "only" if they bother their neighbors. That's in the new rule right? Gosh, I guess my reading comprehension must be acting up because I don't see that mentioned anywhere.
You assume that the only times a neighbor complains about a neighbor, they are 100% in the right. Well, guess what? Some people are just jerks, and they aren't all college students. Some home owners will just be pissy about living next to a house of students, even if they do everything right. This law gives them a way to get the students thrown out for nothing. That's the reality here. This law WILL be used against perfectly civil living arrangements. That's not fair and that was the point being raised. Just because your "shut up about this" argument didn't sway someone doesn't mean they didn't comprehend it.
Your words, not her's
She asked about evictions. That was already addressed.
But you want to bring up evictions because of nosy/complain-y neighbors (not something she was discussing so far as I can tell from what she wrote), sure, we can discuss that. Since this becomes a zoning "can I still rent this space?" issue now, landlords are foolhardy to rent to 5 students even if they're angels on earth. If the neighbor did complain for fun, the landlord would have to deal with the inspector's office for the initial walk-through and the subsequent one where it was shown that the number of residents was reduced to 4, maybe even a fine or fee of some sort. No landlord is going to want to deal with this, so they're just not going to rent their way into trouble anymore. At most, your scenario of people being forced out by city inspectors from perfectly civil living arrangements has legs for all of a year or less (likely only until Sept 1 when 90+% of the city's leases turn over anyways).
It's a new law, my guess is it has an effective date of something like January 1, 2009. Landlords will have plenty of time to act on its requirements and instead of being forced out in the middle of their tai-chi and meditation, the thousands of groups of 5 pacifist graduate students who have the Wicked Witch of the West for a neighbor will be told that, for 1 of them, their lease isn't being extended past its current end date. Like *that* never happens to perfectly good people in any situation of life...
600 Square Feet
Plenty of room for a minimal galley kitchen, bath, and three small bedrooms.
This can be effectively built out of a 1200 sq foot standard issue triple decker flat formerly containing three large bedrooms, living room, bathroom, larger kitchen, and dining room.
I have seen it done. The trick is to get the plumbing lined up for a single wall mini kitchen and use a shower stall.
Sleeps 8.
Oh, and how will you deal with landlords who rent to a group of 4 students who have "friends helping with the rent" who are not officially on the lease? You seem to THINK you know how this is going to work ...
You got me!
You seem to THINK you know how this is going to work ...
Yep, about as much as you do. Okay, maybe a little bit more.
You see, I have already dealt with this exact same law in Newton before (it's been around for quite a while). I've seen the cause for them passing it there, I've seen the resulting attitude adjustment from the student-housing slumlord and how they remodeled places to handle multi-unit housing in giant old Victorian homes, and I've seen none of the apocalypse predicted by the naysayers here.
Don't zoning laws apply only to future uses, not current ones?
If I own a factory and the zoning is changed to residential, I can still continue to operate my factory. This is called "grandfathering."
So if I own a house that I rent to a group of 6 unrelated students, can't I continue indefinitely to do that, even though the zoning law has changed?
Re: students
Frankly I think this law is just another BS "blame the students" headline grab but it does say in the linked article:
So graduate students and probably students who take night classes don't count.
No this isn't a racist comment
but have you been to Dorchester or Mattapan lately? There's like 20 people living in a 2 bedroom.... where the fuck is the justice?
Why would they crowd in like that?
Maybe because Boston hasn't exactly been proactive or even effectively reactive about the cost of housing?
This is as true for students who crowd as families who crowd.
Solution:
Prices would go down and people would be less likely to crowd if anyone could actually get anything built in this town. But the Shadow and Wind Crusaders have effectively but a stop to that!
Immigrants?
If you're talking about poor immigrant families, this is a very old story. The old North End and the now-demolished West End were the same way -- huge families crowded into tiny tenements.
What about the new genre of
What about the new genre of poor immigrant non-families piling in?
Not new either
I analyzed some Census 2K data for Lowell and I constructed an index for "crowding" as a percentage of households in a census unit with with more than a certain number of persons/100 sq ft.
Neighborhoods with lots of recent immigrants near factories shot the moon on that. It is very common, and has been since the era Ron mentioned. Many families took in additional boarders not related to them. Same thing here.
as a recent student i don't
as a recent student i don't see the point of this law, but i'm not against it either. there really isnt a need for more than four students to live in an apartment, house, whatever. though a lot of dorms do this anyway.
this law will do two things in my opinion though:
1. move the parties to apts or houses with 4 people, it wont stop them at all
2. make rents higher for students, or make a lot of houses go up for sale
secret option 3. landlords will obey, keep rent reasonable and that house in brighton that had 6 kids and unruly parties will now have kids and unruly parties (i realize this is some weird hybrid of 1 and 2, i'm tired...)
Its called Party of Five for a reason
Groups of 4 never throw parties, after all. That's just a commonly known fact. You need 5 people living somewhere to have a party, minimum.
I mean, what do you think will happen? An apartment that used to house 6 party-hardy students will now become two seperate apartments housing 3 party hardy students each? Maybe even 4 if the pick-up a lost partier from a house of 5? Thus doubling the nuisance this law is meant to protect?
No, I cannot believe that will happen. I mean, then the law would be foolish and there are never foolish laws.
Analysis from Brighton
Michael Pahre discusses the new ordinance.
Thinking it through
Seriously, play this out. Limiting an apartment to four students means kicking the fifth (or sixth, or ...) student out. So those fifth (or sixth) students band together in quartets and go - where? To find another apartment in the city.
At the same rent, no question, as a quintet (or sextet) would pay. Landlords' fiscal needs, or desires, aren't going to decrease just because there are fewer people splitting the apartment rent.
So now you have poorer students taking up more apartments (which may be created by chopping up more single-family homes). Poorer students means less discretionary spending, so businesses (admittedly, many of the owners of which are not Boston residents) are going to have to tighten up a little. Maybe that part-time weekend clerk gets a pink slip, so now there's another poorer Bostonian. Or maybe the hours get cut back, so when you really need a pack of Winstons or milk or Huggies at 11 p.m., you're hiking to Stop & Shop instead of the corner store.
But, OK, maybe the real answer is: Build more dorms. Most colleges in Boston would love to, if they have the cash ... but neighbors also fight those tooth and nail (Suffolk on Beacon Hill, Northeastern in Roxbury, BC in Brighton). They just don't want college kids living near them; the structure doesn't matter.
So, no, OK, maybe the real answer is: Force Boston's colleges to cap their enrollment at a lower level than they have now. Frankly, if I lived in the city (which God forbid) instead of one of the contiguous suburbs, I might like that option. But the economic ripples of that (fewer staff, fewer junior faculty, less discretionary spending) might build into a tsunami fairly quickly, though. And unless they close, colleges aren't going to give up their (untaxed) property, so the city couldn't even claim a tax-revenue offset. Businesses leave. Streets are emptier, especially at night. Campus police cut back their patrols of areas where kids used to room, lightening up the current "police" presence on Boston streets.
What's it boil down to? Well, imagine if the city had actually enforced zoning and health regulations for years ... Yeah, yeah, that's just crazy talk.
No, really
This one they're going to enforce. They've got the panopticon almost set up so they can catch #5 sneaking in once the lease is signed. Then they'll cut a hole in the ceiling and rappel in, a la Brazil.
I think there's a contradiction between assuming the law won't be any better enforced than the previous laws were and postulating significant macro-economic effects. I do think one important point to notice is that the law only affects undergraduate students, so long-standing Allstonian house-shares with rotating crews of grad students won't be affected.
Myself, I'm plenty glad to live in Boston. And I have students living right next door. Nice kids, they are.
And, yes, the real answer is more dorms. The NIMBYs just have to suck it up.
It will not make any
It will not make any difference unless the city enforces it, and that is very unlikely. Inspectional Services does what it wants, it is the same unresponsive mess that it has been for decades, no matter who is the mayor. Given the transiency of the student population, with changes occurring every semester, it will be difficult to prove overcrowding.
I get a kick from all the silly hypotheticals about this regulation. Houses being turned into ever smaller units, students being tossed on the street, some massive disruption to the housing stock will occur, blah blah blah. The plain fact is that adding lots of students in the neighborhood results in higher rents and run-down property.