On Boston Daily, I’ve blogged about why I’ve filed an amendment to a 2004 law that requires colleges and universities to gather addresses from their students to help Boston’s Inspectional Services Department to help enforce the city’s limit on how many undergraduates can live in one apartment. This amendment will require that colleges notify the ISD and students when they find more than four students in one unit. It will make it easier for the city to enforce the law, which will help cut down on the number of unsafe and unsanitary apartments in our communities. This law will also make those neighborhoods more livable for those who reside there now, and more available and affordable for those same college students after graduation.
As always, I welcome your comments here on Blue Mass Group, or on my website—www.mikerossboston.com.
Thank you for your leadership on this issue! Getting students housed by the universities is win-win.
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p>Speaking of, are you willing to endorse BC’s plan for on-campus housing at the old archdiocese property? Building residences there would be a great benefit to the city, but the project is being held up by local landlords and some Lake St. neighbors who believe they bought property next to a park rather than private property. Sadly, even though getting students housed in dormitories is stated city policy, Mayor Menino caves whenever some NIMBY group comes out of the woodwork. What do you say?
I don’t understand!
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p>I thought there were city council meetings on this, last September, and a regulation was passed by the city council and the Mayor!!
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p>No???
….she lived in a house near Porter Square housing @ 7 people. Each person had a bedroom with a locking door, there was a male and female bathroom, and shared kitchen and common space.
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p>While she was a part-time student, earning a BA and MBA, she was also a young worker – as were most of her house mates.
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p>Does this stipulate STUDENTS or unrelated house mates? Because if it’s the latter…it’s gonna be hard to enforce.
A broader statute was thrown out by the courts, IIRC.
I often see ads for rental units that say “no undergraduates”. To me, that’s like “no Irish need apply”. I don’t understand how Councilor Ross gets away with this.
What it sounds like to me is that you do want students living in your neighborhood and you’re trying to price them out. The tone of your post is really quite disparaging to students. Most students want more than just a cheap place to eat and sleep. Most students care about the communities they live in. Unfortunately, not enough students vote in local elections, so bigoted bums like you can scapegoat them and pass laws that specifically try to exclude them from your neighborhood.
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p>How does more people living in a unit drive up the prices? If all the students lived 4 to an apartment they would need more units. You just want Mission Hill to be a “student-free zone”. This is utterly absurd.
I don’t know if I can agree that most students care about the communities they live in. While I have a number of reasons for this, one of the most common statements I hear by BU undergrads on the B line (which I ride every day) is, “Boston sucks. New York is so much better.”
One thing I can see being a problem is parking. In dense neighborhoods, if a structure is housing 14 students with 14 cars, this is bad for others living there who need on-street parking.
I certainly didn’t. Nor did most of the students I knew. And the city I lived in was less dense and had worse transit than Boston.
Maybe someone can explain: Why does having more people live in one apartment drive up the prices? Councilor Ross states that the new enforcement will provide
But if fewer people can live in one unit, won’t that mean more competition per apartment, driving up prices?
That’s very clear from this line of reasoning. If he actually thought this was about health and safety, he wouldn’t be arguing that this would keep prices low. This is about discriminatory housing practices, plain and simple.
Rental prices will fall for large units. Currently, six college kids throwing in $500 each can rent a pretty large apartment. A family throwing $3000 a month is a much tougher prospect. If you can afford that, you likely buy a house in the burbs or a condo instead of rent.
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p>Prices would go up for smaller units though. All those kids who can no longer rent large apartments now go after the medium size unit market… 3ish bedrooms, 4 kids. Those rents will go up for sure.
It drives up prices for rental property because of the amount of income you can derive from it. If you are limited to 2 apartments in a house, and can get $750 per apartment, you get a maximum of $18k per year in income.
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p>Now imagine that you can chop that house up into 10 bedrooms and charge $400 per bedroom to a student. Now you can get $48,000 per year in income.
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p>A property that can produce $48k in income is worth a lot more than one that can produce just $18k in income.
How on earth could a house that could only get 2 apartments worth $750 go to 10 bedrooms? If the two apartments were big enough for 5 bedrooms each, it’s worth a hell of a lot more than $750…
I live in Springfield. If you look at our assessors information, you will find a lot of 2-family houses which have 10+ rooms. I’m viewing one right now that is listed with 16 rooms. These houses typically are 3-story, each unit has 2 or 3 bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, and often have a couple of storage rooms on the third floor (they are called Boston duplexes). The 16-room example is listed with 4 bedrooms per unit.
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p>Such a property can easily be converted into 5 bedrooms per unit, it happens all the time here. You turn the dining room into a bedroom, maybe even the living room. Some landlords will even put tenants into the basement, and bootleg third floor apartments (aka “finished attic”) are very common but highly illegal and dangerous (since there is usually only one method of egress).
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p>Regarding the “bad logic” post below, the rents don’t scale linearly. A 2-bedroom unit with a dining room and a living room might command a market rent of $750 here (remember, this is not Boston). That doesn’t mean that if a landlord chopped the place up into 5 bedrooms, that he would charge just $150 per person. A student (or any single person) might be willing to pay $200, maybe even $250 for a room in such a place because $200-250 is cheaper than the $375 that he would pay if he rented the non-chopped unit with a roommate.
Sure, an apartment that can house 10 is worth more, and thus costs more, than an apartment that can house 4. But not per person. Per person, it costs less. And affordability is about how much you pay, not about the fact that you and your 9 housemates together are paying more than you and your 3 housemates together would’ve been paying in a 4-person place.
So, Mike Ross can kick five people out of their home based on what they’re doing with their life and the fact that they’re not related? Universities get a mandated monopoly on housing? How is this legal?
until two undergrads get a marriage of legal convenience to stay in the housing they already live in? Why, doing so effectively doubles legal capacity from 4 to 8, no?
We have a world-class metro area here, one of the highest concentrations of science, innovation, art, music, creativity, and technology in the world. This metro area is centered on the city of Boston, but if it were up to the City of Boston itself, it’d all have been dead long ago. Boston not only has no clue how to cultivate its strengths, it actively tries to kill them all off, repeatedly.
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p>Boston harasses art spaces and live music venues. Boston makes it nearly impossible to have 18+ or other under-21 entertainment. Boston tries to clamp down on street art except for the kinds it can fully control. Boston freaks out over anything weird and quirky, like college students with circuit boards on their chests (okay, that was MassPort, though it reflects Boston’s attitude) or cartoon characters in lights. Late night food gets pushed out.
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p>And now this.
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p>Cambridge & Somerville continue to drive the city’s economy and future, with the help of places like Brookline and Waltham and some others. I’m so glad we live in a city made up of separate municipalities that can set their own policies, so I can shake my head at Boston’s city government in dismay and disgust, but at least not in fear for my future as someone who wants to continue living here.
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p>I will, however, continue campaigning for and contributing to the few city council candidates who do seem to understand today’s world, when they run.
Heaven forbid anyone should want to have a beer at 3.00 AM. Much better for them to hop in their car and drive home, since of course the T also largely shuts down after 1.00 AM.
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p>Just for the record.
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p>Pathetic.
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p>The T really should be privatized. It’s hopeless the way it is now.
To clarify some confusion, what I submitted to the Council last week is an amendment to a 2004 law that already requires colleges to collect information on where their students live. The new amendment requires that they use this information to ensure that their students are not breaking the zoning code we enacted last year.
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p>Unscrupulous landlords are not doing undergraduates any favors. When a landlord insulates a porch and puts up walls all over a three-bedroom home, turning it into a 10-bedroom off-campus dorm, he gets almost as much per room for the 10 rooms as he would have received for three. Landlords are not interested in helping students. They will charge as much as they can and still fill those rooms.
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p>Meanwhile, young professionals are leaving our city because they refuse to live in these conditions; the tax base skyrockets, forcing out the elderly and long-time residents; parking becomes scarce; and the community gets destroyed by trash and rodents in these overcrowded environments. The only winner in this scenario is the landlord-turned-slumlord who is doubling and tripling his rental income. My proposal will make Boston a more affordable place for students and professionals alike to call home.
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p>I believe that the strength of Boston’s communities lies in their diversity. Neighborhoods like Mission Hill and Allston-Brighton have a great energy largely because so many students live in these areas, and I am committed to ensuring that students always remain a part of our community – including important ideas like increasing the availability of 18+ bars. But when a neighborhood becomes home to only one population, the community loses its character.
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p>Thank you again for engaging in this conversation. I very much hope to hear other ideas on ways we can make Boston friendlier to students, young professionals, and long-time residents alike.
upon reading your comment, it seems to me that your real beef is with unscrupulous landlords. yet, you seem to blame the students who rent from them for everything from rat infestations to the exodus of the elderly. sorry, but this all sounds like imprisoning the illegal immigrants for working in the factory while allowing the factory owners off scott free.
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p>can you please provide the text of the 2004 law you refer to (with link, if possible), and the text of your proposed amendment?
Your comment gets to the meat of it, you are right to argue that the owners are making money and that’s the only standard we should have.
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p>How can somebody argue that there are appropriate standards on what you see and hear, when the city so often fails to endorse the weak standards it has now? That’s why you have these heavy-handed reactions.
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p>The student situation is a confluence of tasteless old landlords and tasteless students coming together. The city has killed new business development with heavy regulation and relies on the non-profit institutions for expansion of the economy with poorly-paid service jobs. The solution is to empower the small holder to fight back against the institutions but the government is basically in the bag.
With all due respect, the Councilor’s proposal is poorly-thought out and puts the very economic health of the city at risk.
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p>It’s offensive, as well.
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p>You have some nerve.
Is the economic future of the city to strip-mine its open space and infill more poor people?
Do they count as half humans for the sake of calculating Student Units?
The other half gets filled by the other part-time student they no doubt are living with (both of whom will now be tracked down by their diligent Dean of Students, reported to the Boston Police, or Department of Homeland Security, or someone, and arrested, or fined, or sent to a shelter, or forced to live at the home of their landlord, or, something).
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p>Of course, they don’t have much time to sleep anyway what with working a job during the rest of their part-time.
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p>Whether its Mission Hill or South Worcester with its problems Holy Cross students, the problem, it seems to me, is a failure of imagination.
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p>College students are not that long out of high school, so their emotional needs and maturity levels are not all that different. Kids who don’t feel liked or valued often insulate themselves through a callous disregard for others. Open hostility and disinterest are a sure-fire way to ensure that kids who feel marginalized for any reason (in this case by their student status) will register their frustration or anger in anti-social ways.
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p>So rather than treating students like unwanted itinerants or a scourge, perhaps an organized local effort to welcome students would be more productive. This, of course, puts the onus of responsibility on adults (gee whiz!). Students of any age who feel valued and respected act, generally, in respectful and productive ways. Effective schools know this, effective parents know this. This isn’t rocket science.
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p>Your approach is all wrong, sir. Rather than brandishing a stick like the Balding Crabby Neighbor right out of central casting, try an organized thoughtful approach that involves treating students like real people. It’s a lot more work, of course, but if you’re serious about solving some of these problems, you’re going to have to do it. Further marginalizing these students will only make these problems worse.
Do you think there are students who don’t want to live this way?
If the issue is a lack of housing for everyone, then enforcing limits on the number of students is clearly the wrong solution.
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p>If the issue is noise/disruptions, aren’t there other laws that focus on those issues? A house of 10 students who treat their neighborhood courteously is not a problem; it’s the ones who don’t that are. It’s foolish to come down on all students, sort of like insurance companies taking factors like GPA into account while setting fees (is that still illegal?)
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p>Lastly, if it’s crumbling facilities, that’s the landlords’ responsibility. I don’t see how any aspect is addressed by the zoning laws.
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p>Also, is there any issue of privacy here? The school being forced to turn over names and addresses? Not sure on that last point.
The police don’t really enforce the noise laws now.
I think the reason why this legislation rubs people the wrong way is because it attempts to solve the unscrupulous landlord issue through a quasi witch hunt of college students. If the only issue here is slumlords creating off campus dorms, then why not draft a bill that switches the focus to create a massive outreach program to students to help protect them from these landlords?
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p>Consider what Cos said (2/15/09 @ 3:19AM) and tie that together with this slumlord issue:
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p>College students are our only natural resource and we are currently an export-only economy when it comes to that resource. Boston’s future rests with these young college students staying in Boston and raising their families here. Yet all we seem to do is make it harder and harder for them to stand it here. Anytime I talk with a undergrad or grad student from a top area school I never hear them even consider working in Boston after graduation. They only see Boston as a waypoint before they start their career elsewhere. No wonder why they don’t take ownership in their communities and get involved in civic life here (whether it be voting or in community groups).
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p>Boston needs to embrace our students and recruit them to remain here and contribute to the economic development of the city. The City should be getting onto the campuses and opening constituent service offices there where students can report landlords and get protection from those who would take advantage of them, as well as offer many other services to make the students feel welcome here while at the same time monitoring to make sure those who get out of line are kept in check.
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p>We could even start to develop secondary neighborhoods into viable alternatives for older undergrads and grad students by increasing fast public transit from these outer rim neighborhoods to the university centers.
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p>There are many ideas to work on this situation, but the witch hunt idea falls short.
These are all very thoughtful posts on the students, but unfortunately they are unrealistic. Students move off campus because living in the dorms does not give them the things they want. What are those things? Maybe a quiet place to work. Maybe a nice place to live. Maybe a place to mate with some privacy. Maybe a better place to drink and do drugs. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of students and “young professionals” and for the most part, even the drinking and drugging is pretty quiet. However I do have kids and they go to school on Friday morning too, and they have lots of sports etc on Saturday morning, so for the five months of a year when windows can be opened here, I will have very close relationships with the people around me.
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p>I would like to believe that there is a cultural solution to this, in that the colleges could understand that they are part of a city, and the people living next to campus are not a lower class than the people in the college. Saving the environment around the schools would be as important as saving the reefs in the South Pacific. The colleges might be inspired to plan and build in a way that accepts the city and doesn’t try to wall it off, or kill off-hours life (see Longwood Ave). Maybe the colleges could stop promoting top-down economic policies that work to kill off small development around them in favor of boring institutional growth.
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p>Maybe the colleges could give up their anti-elitism and start to teach the students that there is such a thing as culture, and change the standard of attractiveness so that acting like an ass or a whore is not acceptable any more. Failing that if the drinking age was back to 18, then the students could drink on campus. I could also see how that would cut down on on the binges. Maybe sex education could concentrate on teaching people how to talk somebody into sex without getting smashed first.
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p>But if we really want the students to change then it’s up to us to change first and show what it takes to become part of the community, and that changing that way will pay off for them.