City Councilor Mike Ross said yesterday a change to the Boston zoning code that would bar more than four undergraduate students from living in the same apartment will protect students from predatory landlords and bring families back into neighborhoods where student populations have driven up rents.
Some students and organizations, like the Small Property Owners Association, have raised opposition to the plan approved by the City Council in December that would refine the zoning code. The Boston Redevelopment Authority last week changed the language of the amendment to exclude graduate students from the restriction. The Zoning Commission will hear the amendment Wednesday.
The zoning amendment could be challenged as an improper use of Boston’s zoning power, depending on its final form, said Boston University School of Law professor Jack Beermann. Zoning laws in Massachusetts are meant to determine how a building can be used, and are not intended to distinguish between the identities of property users.
As the BRA approved it last week, the amendment would apply to undergraduate students, but not graduate students. Because these groups would not use rented apartments differently, a challenge could be made against the city’s use of zoning powers, Beermann said.
Beermann said cities are able to make rules that specifically target students, because “as long as you have a reason to believe that students are different from other people,” a law will not be challenged as discriminatory.
Ross said landlords prey upon students by taking advantage of a 2003 Boston case that made it difficult for the city Inspectional Services Department to enforce a decades-old rule that no more than four unrelated people could rent an apartment together. As student populations at former commuter schools like BU and Northeastern University boomed and zoning enforcement relaxed, landlords increasingly rented to students, cramming them into spaces that had once been occupied by families.
“Any possible living, sleeping place is being converted into a bedroom,” he said in a presentation to The Daily Free Press editorial board.
Ross said he thinks students move off-campus because of high rent in university-owned residences averaging $1,000 a month; he estimated average off-campus student rent at $750 per month. Ross said students drive families out of neighborhoods when they move off-campus, because landlords can charge higher rents for students than families, which raises tax rates for entire neighborhoods.
The move to limit off-campus student housing is meant to help Ross’s constituents who live near college campuses, where “whole neighborhoods are serving as shadow campuses for universities,” Ross said.
“In good public policy you have to justify why you’re going to allow a university like BU to exceed zoning, to go above certain height restrictions, go well above certain height restrictions,” he said, referring to development projects at universities that require special consideration from the city.
However, Beermann said if the student-renter cap encourages renters and landlords to avoid signing formal leases, both parties risk running into larger legal problems.
“It’s a bad situation. Both sides lose their legal protection,” Beermann said.
Ross said besides a letter to BU Community Relations Director Joseph Walsh, he has not contacted BU about the change to off-campus student zoning rules. Walsh could not be reached for comment last night.
“We sent them a form. Here’s what we’re doing. If you want to sign on please let us know,” Ross said.
Ross said capping the number of students who can live in an apartment, along with changes in the housing market, will improve families’ prospects in student neighborhoods.
“In a couple years you’re going to have housing back,” he said.
Beermann said it will be difficult to predict the ultimate effect of the amendment, and it may even be the opposite of what its supporters intend.
“Obviously if you take away some of the buying power of the students it lowers demand. But if you send students further away it might have the perverse effect of bringing more students into further neighborhoods,” Beermann said.
Ross said the short-term effects of the zoning change may force rents to change in neighborhoods near universities and may force landlords to foreclose on their properties or sell.
“Well, they may have to foreclose,” he said. “But do you know how many poor people have had to foreclose in this city? We have 900 foreclosures.”
Ross said enforcement of the new regulation will be left to the Boston Inspectional Services Department.
The possible new rule is unenforceable because undergraduates or landlords could easily evade the system, said Skip Schloming, Small Property Owners Association executive director.
SPOA considers the zoning amendment to be an attempt at creating rent controls, Schloming said. The net effect will increase rent for individual students while lowering the amount landlords can charge an entire unit, he said.
“The students will have to pay more, and the landlords will have to charge less,” Schloming said.
The size and character of individual units determines how many renters should live in an apartment, Schloming said. Some residences are too small to support four renters and others can support more than four — a limit Schloming said City Council arbitrarily picked.
He said city government cannot effectively force neighborhoods to restore past student-family population ratios.
“There should be student neighborhoods,” he said.