A year after the ‘no more than four’ zoning law banning more than four undergraduate students from living together passed, Boston City Council met Tuesday to discuss more drastic measures to enforce the off-campus housing regulation that has been largely ignored by students and landlords alike.
City Council President Mike Ross (Back Bay, Fenway, Kenmore), who co-sponsored the law that passed March 13, 2008, proposed a new ordinance Feb. 11 that would expand the ‘University Accountability Report’ that currently requires universities to file the number of students living on and off-campus to the Inspectional Services Department. The proposal would expand the requirement to include the specific addresses where students live.’
Although Councilors said Tuesday this information is necessary to enforce the March 2008 regulation, university officials told the councilors at the meeting the proposal would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Emerson College Vice President of Student Affairs David Rosen said Emerson would not be able to provide student information.
‘We believe based on consultation with our attorneys that the ordinance as written, which would require us to turn over names of individuals to the city, would violate the privacy information in FERPA,’ Rosen said.
However, Ross told The Daily Free Press he plans to meet with school officials in order to clarify legal issues because releasing student locations without the students’ names does not violate FERPA.
‘I will allow that conversation to take place, and then we will go from there,’ Ross said.
Inspectional Services Commissioner Bill Good said there have been difficulties enforcing the regulation.’ The system relies on complaints from local residents, but none have been received since the regulation passed, Good said.
‘We don’t have that bright line of use,’ he said of enforcement. Because the city can only respond to complaints, and there haven’t been any, they have been unable to investigate any possible infractions.
Ross said he proposed a stricter enforcement of the regulation to help preserve quality of life for Boston residents.
‘This wasn’t because I woke up one day and said that I didn’t want college kids to be able to live in my neighborhood,’ Ross said. ‘But rather, I woke up one day and realized we had lost an entire neighborhood for residents.’
Boston University has worked well with the city of Boston to combat the problem of student overcrowding, Councilor Mark Ciommo (Allston, Brighton) said.
‘Boston University, in recent years, has built a significant amount of beds which is helpful [to] relieve the crisis in that area of Allston,’ he said.
Councilor-At-Large John Connolly said the reforms were meant to target property owners, not students, but overcrowded apartments can cause problems for neighborhoods.
Apartments with a mass of students can result in poor behavior such as, ‘kegs flying out of windows, public urination and creating those parties that drive people out of Mission Hill and also Brighton, Back Bay and Fenway,’ Connolly said.
Northeastern University junior Brian Droney said all students who live off campus do not fit the typical partying college student stereotype. Droney said he lives with more than four of his undergraduate peers in Mission Hill, yet they spend their free time coaching Little League, not tapping kegs.
‘If there are seven people living together to lower their cost, and there are no complaints against them, I don’t think that should be a problem,’ Droney said.
However, Mission Hill resident Pat Flaherty said many families are leaving Boston communities because of the influx of students.
‘ ‘It’s going to be pretty hard to be a Little League coach when you don’t have any families left to play Little League,’ she said.
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