BU may enforce student housing restriction
Alex Selvig
BU may be the first college to help in enforcing the new City Ordinance limiting the number of students who can live together in a housing unit to four. Many of us from Allston-Brighton spoke in favor of this measure at the BRA hearing last year, and helped to pass it, despite well-organized and determined opposition from absentee landlords.
Let’s hope that BC, NU, and the other college join in helping us improve the quality of life for everyone in our neighborhoods.
http://www.dailyfreepress.com/bu_may_enforce_student_housing_restriction-1.1373629
An excerpt:
As of 2004, universities
must file a “University Accountability Report” that has the number
of students, and the number of students that live on and off-campus, according
to the City of Boston website. This new ordinance will take the 2004 enforcement
further by requiring schools to submit actual violator names.
If universities do not submit information regarding students’
whereabouts, the ISD has no idea how many students are living in an apartment
or house, Kantor said.
“Colleges already have to figure out where their students live,”
Kantor said. “Now they [universities] must do something with it.”
If the ordinance passes, universities would have to go through the
accountability reports to find names of students who share the same address
with more than three of their peers, and report it to the ISD.
Ross raised concerns that without the implementation of this law, some of
Boston’s residential neighborhoods will be turned into “extensions
of college campuses.”
Boston’s neighborhoods “should be for everyone,” he said.
Kantor said landlords break up homes into smaller units, and “have been
cramming students in and charging them ridiculous amounts of rent.”
As a result of this practice, property taxes have increased in some
Boston’s neighborhoods, such as Mission Hill, forcing some residents to
relocate.
“People who have been there for 25 or 30 years suddenly can’t
afford to stay there because the value of surrounding homes is increasing to
levels they can’t sustain,” Kantor said.
alex....@gmail.com
Try this one:
http://www.dailyfreepress.com/bu_may_enforce_student_housing_restriction-1.1373629
On Feb 12, 12:08 pm, "Alex Selvig" <A...@AlexSelvig.com> wrote:
> BU may be the first college to help in enforcing the new City Ordinance
> limiting the number of students who can live together in a housing unit to
> four. Many of us from Allston-Brighton spoke in favor of this measure at the
> BRA hearing last year, and helped to pass it, despite well-organized and
> determined opposition from absentee landlords.
>
> Let's hope that BC, NU, and the other college join in helping us improve the
> quality of life for everyone in our neighborhoods.
>
> 373629
Gittle
the neighbourhood and elsewhere, but this regulation is extremely
misguided and unnecessary. For starters, there already is an
ordinance (or regulation, or whatever it is) on the books mandating a
minimum square footage per occupant in each residential unit. For
example, two people can not live in a studio. This "cramming" that
the article mentions is already illegal, so ISD should be spending its
time enforcing existing provisions of the code.
A good friend of mine is a resident on Linden Street in Allston; he is
a student at Boston University and lives in a five-bedroom apartment
that he owns; he lives with four other people who are his classmates.
Officially, his father owns it, and you could call him an "absentee
landlord" by the letter of the definition since he lives in
Shrewsbury, but he hires an outside manager to oversee the property,
and this manager lives in the city and is on call 24/7. Under these
new rules, he has to either 1. kick somebody out of his house, or 2.
move out of his own house. That doesn't sound particularly fair, now,
does it? Especially since nobody's being crammed into anywhere.
Essentially, what these rules will do is take a large number of units
off the market (anything over four bedrooms) while doing nothing to
relieve demand. Basic economics says that with limited supply, prices
(i.e., rents) will go up. I don't see how this will do anything for
costs and quality.
Also, Alex, you know there is a big match coming up in a couple of
weeks. Come on Arsenal! :-D
Eric Gittleman
Lanark Road
Brighton
Full disclosure: I am a real estate agent for an agency near Boston
University West Campus and a significant portion of my clients are
university students, although most of my clients last year were
graduate students and working professionals. Having said that, I know
who the slumlords/absentee landlords are (at least those who don't
hire local managers), and I have never rented any of their apartments;
I have no desire to show any of their apartments.
On Feb 12, 12:08 pm, "Alex Selvig" <A...@AlexSelvig.com> wrote:
> limiting the number of students who can live together in a housing unit to
> four. Many of us from Allston-Brighton spoke in favor of this measure at the
> BRA hearing last year, and helped to pass it, despite well-organized and
> determined opposition from absentee landlords.
>
> Let's hope that BC, NU, and the other college join in helping us improve the
> quality of life for everyone in our neighborhoods.
>
> 373629
alex....@gmail.com
The minimum square footage that you reference is indeed minimum. One
person could live in a 7x10 room, but two could live in a 10x10 room,
three in a 10x15, five in a 15x17.
Sounds like less space than you'd get in MCI Concord (prison).
From the Inspectional Services Department, City of Boston:
105 CMR 410.000: MINIMUM STANDARDS OF FITNESS FOR HUMAN HABITATION
(STATE
SANITARY CODE, CHAPTER II)
410.400: Minimum Square Footage
(A) Every dwelling unit shall contain at least 150 square feet of
floor space for its first occupant, and at least 100 square feet of
floor space for each additional occupant, the floor space to be
calculated on the basis of total habitable room area.
(B) In a dwelling unit, every room occupied for sleeping purposes by
one occupant shall contain at least 70 square feet of floor space;
every room occupied for sleeping purposes by more than one occupant
shall contain at least 50 square feet of floor space for each
occupant.
(C) In a rooming unit, every room occupied for sleeping purposes by
one occupant shall contain at least 80 square feet of floor space;
every room occupied for sleeping purposes by more than one occupant
shall contain at least 60 square feet for each occupant.
The old "no more than four unrelated persons" went by the boards after
ISD kicked in the door of the Sang-Vo family, and had to pay out
$119,000 in the ensuing lawsuit, if my memory serves me correctly.
Sandy Furman
Just asking: It's 2:24 A.M. Would you like to walk over and engage
our young friends, yelling and hollering in a bit of youthful (and
drunken) exuberance at the corner of Gerald Road and Greycliff and
who just woke us up, in a bit of polite discussion about how to
behave?
I really don't feel like getting dressed and walking around the block
for this. Been there, done that, too many times. And even if I were
to do so, it's at best 50/50 as to whether they'd go inside or say
f__u old man.
I called the BC police and we'll see how long it takes for them to
come, if at all.
This is why they need to be in dorms, where this behavior is not
tolerated by BC.
I know you fear that the same behavior would occur if there were
dorms. Except the fact, at least so the folks on Priscilla Road and
Comm Ave tell me, is that it just doesn't.
This is why I keep pointing to the difference between a hypothetical
problem - dorms - and a real problem - students uncontrolled and
fundamentally uncontrollable - living in rooming houses. I really
don't mean to personalize this. But you are the one who wrote earlier
today about how you are able deal effectively with the one student
house at the top of Lake Street, and you are one of the leaders of
the "no dorms on St. John's contingent.
Again, by "preserving your neighborhood" you, Maria, and BNU are,
perhaps unwittingly but you are nevertheless in fact acting so as to
prevent the reclamation of my neighborhood.
I am aware that in a recent letter sent out by BNU leadership, Rahm
and Abigail to it's members in the aftermath of the BRA hearing,
there was a plea to flood the mayor with correspondence demanding one
thing and one thing only - that the temporary ban on dorm
construction on St. John's be made permanent. Nothing about the need
to insist on housing 100%. That pretty clearly set forth BNU's true
priority. 100% may be an expressed goal, but it takes a distant back
seat to the no dorms on St. John's issue. And ultimately, if
successful, as it may well be, the status quo, for better (your side
of the seminary) and worse (my side) is what will be preserved.
The primary goal around which we all could and should unite is 100%
housing. All of us getting behind that goal - now that is change I
could believe in.
Sandy Furman