Affordable Housing Institute : US

Communities exist because people come together, and as people are a totality, not dismemberable into economic versus biological elements —

 

We don’t want you in our community

 

– one would expect that a locality would embrace the rough with the smooth.  Yet often localities wish to separate a group’s money (which they prize) from its presence (which they loathe), as revealed in this interesting article from the Knight Ridder Tribune:

 

Harold Adamson has lived in Indiana Borough [153 Fisher Avenue — Ed.] most of his 82 years.

 

Two-thirds of a mile from campus

 

Mike Leedecke, 21, moved there two years ago to attend classes at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. They are on opposite ends of an intensifying debate on a proposed borough ordinance that would keep students from renting homes in some residential areas.

 

Over and over we find that localities have the concept that some residents are more equal than others.

 

Some are more equal than others

 

Now, there’s no question some recent post-adolescents may haven exuberance, irrational or hormonal or otherwise, that makes them raucous night owls, and a town’s citizens may legitimately demand that the newcomers conform to normal civic standards of behavior.  But consigning them to marginal parts of town, or banning them altogether?

 

Officials in college towns such as California and Slippery Rock are watching with interest. Jesse Hines, code enforcement officer for Slippery Rock Borough, said there is a constant challenge in a college town to balance the needs of students and families. 

 

Is many a Rolling Rock drunk in Slippery Rock?

 

“There’s a time in life when you don’t want to live next to eight college guys,” Hines said.

 

And there are times when sitting next to eight guys is the right thing to do

 

It all depends on which college guys, and what they do as your neighbors.  I’m sure Indiana has ordinances against disturbing the peace; it has local police who can call on nocturnal revelers.  If the issue is behavior, manage the few, rather than banning the many.

 

Adamson can relate. “I don’t think they belong in the borough,” Adamson said, while pruning a tree in his Fisher Avenue front yard. “They belong on the campus in college housing. They ruined this town.  It’s not a community anymore.  It’s not family-oriented like it used to be.”

 

Even making appropriate allowance for Mr. Adamson’s desire for quiet enjoyment (a staple of real estate property rights), his view invites the question of what constitutes ruining a town.  Do ‘those people’ automatically do it?  Or is it simply ‘too many’ of ‘those people’?  Or just the wrong kind of ‘those people’?

 

“‘Those people’?”  Jimmy Stewart, born in Indiana, PA,

 

Leedecke, who lives in a house on Church Street with four other students, said the ordinance makes no sense. “The town feeds off of college students. That’s how they make their money,” Leedecke said, standing by a card table on his front porch. “It will hurt the town rather than help it.”

 

While you may be tolerating this blog post as simply a classic codger-versus-stoner debate, it actually expresses a broader issue. 

 

Those are some broad implications

 

Some folks are net economic contributors, so towns want them to visit.  We like their money, or we like their labor.  Once they’ve served their essential function of making us wealthier, however, we’d really like them to go away, and be their plebeian selves somewhere else. 

 

Like Homer or Clymer

 

Cross out ’student’ and write in ‘blue-collar worker’ and the dynamics are identical.  Or write in ‘retiree’ or ‘vacationer’ and the same forces are at play: locals reserve the right to feel superior, and to soak the newcomer, even as they willingly accept the newcomer’s contributions.

 

On July 3, borough council will hold a public hearing on the ordinance that would prevent more single-family homes in residential neighborhoods from being converted to student rentals.

Any new rental homes could only be leased by “functional families.”

 

“I guess I’m not functional.”

 

“Over the years, many houses have been converted from family housing into student rentals,” borough Manager Ken Gabler said. He estimated more than half of the housing units in the borough are occupied by students.

 

From whence did all these dreadful students come, to matriculate or otherwise? 

 

Indiana officials estimate about 5,100 students live in off-campus housing within the borough. The university has beds for about 3,900 students on campus. Student population is more than 14,200.

 

I think at this juncture the economic point is proven.  So we have a student population of 12,400 in a town of 14,800.  Without the university, Indiana PA might well have no economic existence. 

 

Without the students, nothing but woods?

 

Of these pestilential students, 28% live on campus, 36% live in the town itself, and 36% live even further away.  Nearly 70% of students live off campus, providing high-paying demand for more than half the borough’s housing, and still the locals sniff. 

 

We’re too good for the students

 

By the way, where did those who live in town secure apartments?  Why, from town residents rented to them.  So Mr. Adamson’s zoning and real estate use beef is not with the student as much as it is with the university, or his more mercenary neighbors — but they make a less-easily-stereotyped target.

 

“Students maybe have a different lifestyle than a family might have. They keep later hours. They might hold parties,” Gabler said.

 

Maybe some do.  Maybe those that do should be reprimanded.  Maybe the community ought to be clearer about its desire for quiet evenings. 

 

Shirley and Bob Hoover hope the line can be held away from their block of School Street, where they bought their home 45 years ago.

 

Well, maybe not right here

 

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

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