[The best way for established neighborhood residents and homeowners to curb irritating student behaviors—like leaving garbage carts on the sidewalk all week long, making lots of noise and parking on the grass—is to go talk to their student neighbors soon after they move in to discuss things like city noise ordinances and politeness.
That's the advice Athens-Clarke Co. Commissioner David Lynn offered in Sunday's Athens Banner-Herald story about some college students violating a local ordinance limiting how many unrelated people that can live together in house in neighborhoods zoned for single-families.
Compared to trying to enforce an ordinance that requires the counting of "unrelated" people living together, he's surely right: direct talk about what really irritates people—the trash, noise and parking issues—is a better approach.
But even though there's much to recommend Lynn's approach—it's immediately implementable, it doesn't involve writing new rules and it apparently works (at least so far, in particular neighborhoods)—there are problems with it. First, it gets old pretty fast. And second, it won't work in neighborhoods under heavy student pressure.
I've now lived in four college towns, always fairly near campus. It's not fun to have to talk to new neighbors every year about fairly obvious matters of politeness and then be ignored as often as not. Over time as more students move in, fewer established residents have the patience to do that every year and so they move...and yet another block gets lost to student rot—which is a real loss to the community.
That said, I personally haven't had any student problems where I live in Athens...but I'm sure some neighborhoods nearer to campus do have such problems.Anyway, here's my take on a possible way to address the problem of student rot. I wrote this while living in Lexington, Ky. in a neighborhood that was badly afflicted with the rot...]
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When college students cram into homes built for single families, the rot that results is hard to miss. Even if you've never lived in a neighborhood near campus, you'd have no trouble identifying the telltale signs. Trash-strewn yards. Over-parked streets and driveways. Rotting couches on rotting porches. Loud parties into the wee hours.There is no mystery about why college students make nice, older neighborhoods look crappy when enough of them move in. What is a mystery, though, is why cities and colleges—town and gown—don't seem motivated to do much to prevent the spoiling of these neighborhoods.
This lack of motivation is not good news for anyone—for neighborhoods, for cities, for colleges or for students. Here are three reasons why town and gown should work together to stop student rot:
1. Crappiness and crime. When too many college students move in, they have two neighborhood-killing effects. First, they quickly make houses look like run down tenements. Second, their high turnover rate sucks the life out of the neighborhood by making it hard for neighbors to come to know and trust and respect each other. When neighborhoods lack neighborliness they rapidly become unpleasant, and risk becoming unsafe as well. Cities risk seeing neighborhoods slide into shabby and dangerous places in need of constant patrol. Colleges risk being surrounded by such neighborhoods.2. Use of prime residential areas for workers and families. Near campus neighborhoods are usually located in desirable parts of town. They are often walkable neighborhoods, close to work, schools and shopping. Such short commute neighborhoods are becoming even more desirable for working families and individuals as gas prices continue to rise and as more people seek "greener" lifestyles. Having such neighborhoods helps cities attract and retain longer-term taxpaying residents. They also help colleges to attract new faculty.
3. Opportunity to harness student energy. Efforts to stop student rot, if done right (I'll suggest ways to do it right below), can transform even large student populations into unalloyed economic and cultural gold for cities. After all, students are hardly just a bane for cities; they are huge assets, too. The trick is to harness student energy to create more vibrant life on campus and in a distinctive student-centered city district.
Myths about student rot
Let's say, after having absorbed the three points just mentioned, city and college policymakers now understand why it's important to fight student rot. Let's say they are motivated to act. What should they do?
The first order of business should be to avoid being distracted by some common myths.
Myth #1: Students are only half the problem. It's true that students and the absentee landlords that rent to them don't cause all the rot. Irresponsible homeowners certainly do exist. So do responsible students. But because you can find examples of bad homeowners and good students doesn't change the reality that most students are highly transient renters with little stake in the neighborhoods they live in and that most homeowners aren't very transient and usually do care a lot about where they live. Students don't cause all the rot, but they are surely responsible for most of it.
Myth #2: Student rot in neighborhoods near campus is to be expected. Well, of course, your neighborhood is infested with students. You live next to campus! What did you expect? If something like that is your response to people who complain about student rot, consider this: not long ago neighborhoods right next to campus—right next to lots of students—were populated mainly by homeowners with a sprinkling of student renters. Not long ago many of these neighborhoods were pleasant, cared-for places. An enlivening diversity of people—most with a real stake in a good neighborhood—lived there. This mix often included college faculty, administrators and workers and their families, first-time homebuyers, older folks with long-time connections to the area—and some students.
Myth #3: Increasing student enrollments are the cause. Students flood into once pleasant, stable neighborhoods. Homeowners flee. Neighborhoods deteriorate. Surely, increases in student enrollment explain this. Well, that's certainly part of the explanation. But it is only part because the student flood into residential neighborhoods outpaces the growth in enrollment in most places. Choices made by colleges play a bigger explanatory role. Choices such as: building less on-campus student housing; ending on-campus living requirements for freshmen and sophomores; and banning or severely restricting on-campus drinking. It's these choices—choices that push students off-campus into city neighborhoods—and not increasing enrollments that account for most of the student influx.
Myth #4: New ordinances will solve the problem. Under pressure from homeowner constituents, city policymakers may be tempted to fight student rot with new ordinances. Direct attacks on the problem include proposals to limit the number of students that can live together in one house or to restrict the number of houses that can be rented to students. Other proposals target symptoms: ticketing loud partiers, fining students and landlords for trash and poor upkeep and extending college conduct rules to cover off-campus behavior. There an indirect efforts, too, such as using zoning rules to protect architectural character which may have the effect of reducing the financial attractiveness of chopping-up single-family houses into student rentals. Some of these ideas might be worthy on their own terms or employed as temporary measures. But they won't do much to stop student rot because they don't deal with a fundamental economic fact: the intense student demand for housing near campus and the good money to be made by renting. Ignoring the economics isn't helpful. The force is too strong.
Better ideas
So, what should be done? What might work?
As I see it, the efforts of city and college policymakers should aim at significantly reducing student demand for housing in near campus neighborhoods.
This doesn't mean adopting policies that allow homeowners to shoot students on sight. It doesn't mean dispersing students far and wide. It doesn't mean cutting enrollments.
What it does mean is concentrating most of student life where it belongs: on campus and in a well-defined, vibrant student-centered district.
Here are three proposals intended to accomplish that:
1. Revitalize on-campus student housing. Colleges should revive the tradition of on-campus living for most students, and build the capacity to house them. Many students today don't want to live on campus. One reason they don't is that most dormitories really suck; they are the American version of bleak East German apartment blocs. But this can be changed. Some colleges are now building new-style residence halls featuring well-designed rooms with fully equipped kitchens, fitness centers, social lounges, movie theaters, pools, game rooms, cable TV and even restaurants, coffee shops and other retail spaces. Even college administrators are starting to realize that cool student housing and other social amenities help with recruitment efforts. When combined with requirements that students live on campus, such efforts create a concentrated, revitalized campus culture. Students like that.
2. End prohibition. When colleges ban on-campus drinking they give students a powerful motivation to move into off-campus neighborhoods where they can party at will without any supervision. Colleges that lift this prohibition and establish policies to allow of-age students to drink responsibly in their rooms and create other venues where social drinking is permitted will be better positioned to intervene when there are problems. Prohibition doesn't stop student drinking; it just shifts where the drinking is done. The responsibility for supervision properly lies with the colleges, not the residents of near campus neighborhoods.
3. Create a vibrant student district. Even where there's a lively on-campus student culture, students will spill into the city—especially into the nearby neighborhoods—for adventure or at least a change of pace. The city should welcome them with a well-defined, concentrated district that caters to their interests and needs. Restaurants. Bookstores. Coffee houses. Smoke shops. Affordable off-campus apartments. Clothing stores. Free wi-fi. Bars. Art galleries. Some high-end condos for the rich kids. A museum. A public water fountain that it's OK to splash around in. Such a district would be extremely appealing—and not just to students. It would harness the economic and cultural energy of students for the good of everyone.
In the meantime
To do these things will require lots of cooperation among city and college policymakers and developers, too. And because it won't happen overnight, city and college leaders must also cooperate on policies for the interim to assure both existing and prospective near campus neighborhood residents that the vitality and quality of these neighborhoods is important.
This means cities should vigorously enforce housing codes and noise ordinances and swiftly fine students and absentee landlords for violations. Colleges should extend student honor codes to encompass off-campus behavior and appoint troubleshooters to work with neighborhood groups and residents to identify and deal with student problems in residential areas.
But don't forget these are temporary "fixes." They are intended mainly to signal that cities and colleges care about the fate of near campus neighborhoods. If intended as permanent solutions to the problem, these policies will only guarantee endless frustration for everyone involved. If the real problem—student demand for housing in near campus neighborhoods—is not dealt with, then the result will be campuses surrounded by shabby, unsafe neighborhoods. This will happen sooner than you think. And when it happens, everyone—students, residents, city leaders and college administrators—loses.
New goal for neighborhood residents
The benefits of these proposals are clear and substantial. Cities get higher quality neighborhoods. Students and colleges get re-vitalized campus life. Everyone gets to enjoy the cultural and economic energy of a new and distinctive student-centered district.
To obtain these prizes, however, town and gown policymakers will have to be pushed into action by the residents of near campus neighborhoods.
But these residents will have to embrace a new, more strategic goal—that of significantly reducing demand for student housing in their neighborhoods.
This means energies currently spent on seeking new ordinances to control student rentals and to punish students and absentee landlords for misbehavior will have to be re-directed. The new work will involve enlisting city and state policymakers to help push colleges to build more student housing and to re-vitalize campus life. It will also mean demanding that cities start working with planners and developers to create student-centered commercial and cultural districts.
Such work will take more time than getting a new ordinance passed, but the pay-off will be much sweeter: a pleasant, safe neighborhood right next to campus.
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