One of the things that I love about the College Station and Bryan is that no matter what neighborhood that someone lives in they tend to describe it in terms that suggest that it is the best neighborhood to live in. The only possible explanation for this is that they have never visited my neighborhood, which is quite plainly the best neighborhood to live in.
I live in Oakwood which is just across the street from campus to the east of Dexter Park. The houses are older and distinctive. There are no sidewalks but it is a great neighborhood for walking because there is very little traffic on the streets. The neighbors are good, decent, friendly people who care about where they live. Most of them are die-hard Aggies. This is, in many respects, a typical campus neighborhood more suited to faculty than students. And like most such neighborhoods there are a few students sprinkled throughout in garage apartments, small bungalows and a few houses.
For the most part the students are not a bother and frequently add charm to the neighborhood. But occasionally there will be a bad lot. And for this reason my neighbors, like most of Bryan and College Station, are ready to act in ways that run counter to their usual good natured and reasonable ways.
They want to tell students where they may not live. Both ideologically and practically, this is a bad approach. The behavior of some students is a very real problem that needs a good approach. On this we have no disagreement.
From the pragmatic perspective, everyone agrees that it is almost impossible to determine who lives in a house and who is just staying over. But, the argument goes, they did this in Bryan and it is working. While I have not seen any data to support this claim, let’s just suppose it is working in Bryan for now. What is going to happen when a group of Animal House students realizes that they can thwart the wit of authority by making them prove who is living in a house? Not only will the students have won, they will have been emboldened. It is human nature for young people to find pleasure in exerting their own authority. This is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
Really, the problem is not who students live with The problem is the behavior of some students. It is parking, trash and load parties. These things we have laws to to deal with. So why are we trying to determine who students can live with rather than enforcing laws that are already exist to protect us from these problems? While it is very difficult to determine, or even define, who is living in a particular house, it is quite simple to measure decibels, identify trash and determine what cars are in violation of parking ordinances. What makes people think that we will be able to enforce a vague and questionable ordinance when we have not succeeded in enforcing very easily enforced ordinances that is more directly connected to the problem?
It has been said that we lack enough enforcement to enforce the existing ordinances. Clearly the new ordinance would only exacerbate that. We, as a community, need to decide if this is a priority. If it is we need to hire additional code enforcement people. Perhaps we need to increase fines to help pay for this additional cost.
I can imagine that part of the issue may be delegation. What patrol person would not rather do almost anything than confront a house full of drunken college kids? This probably eats up a huge amount of time. I can imagine that dealing with one college party could take a couple of officers several hours. They probably feel that this is not the best way to protect the safety of the community. Before a city is large enough to hire a specialized officer to handle animal control, animal control is a nuisance to the officer who is under trained and has other business to take care of. Perhaps it is time that we hire additional student control officers to work on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
From an ideological perspective we know that restricting housing is a bad approach. First of all most students are not causing a problem; so we would be punishing the many to deal with the few.
I have a copy of the original deed restriction for Oakwood that were written in the 40’s. Those deed restrictions refuse “people of color” from living in the neighborhood. I hope that there is no one in the neighborhood that would tolerate such a restriction today. And though denying students to live where they freely choose is not nearly as egregious as racism - the students, after all, will grow out of their youth - it is, nonetheless, not dissimilar from other forms of housing discrimination.
The people of my neighborhood are good people. They love A&M and they love Aggies. I am confident that in the end they will opt for a more practical solution to this very real problem.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
What will my neighbors think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
One of your neighbors on Lee wrote what he thinks last week in a letter to the editor:
http://www.theeagle.com/letters
/Letters-for-March--1
If I had to guess most of the people living in the Southside area want the "2-unrelated" ordinance passed. They are seeing more and more of these older homes being rented out to students. Of course, it would make sense to have students living close to campus so they don't necessarily have to drive to campus, but that's an argument for another time.
Here is Mr. Newman's letter:
Limits are good
I love Texas A&M as much as anyone and, in general, I am not anti-student, but I do thoroughly support a plan to limit the number of unrelated adults living in a single-family residence on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. The goal of such a plan is to preserve neighborhood identity and integrity and to protect property values.
Sophomore Emily Jewell (Eagle, Feb. 26) wishes to lecture that this is a college town and that most students have four or five roommates to share expenses and "to limit to two people is just absurd."
I will tell you what is absurd: having four of five students move into a quiet, family-oriented neighborhood and live as if they were on a desert island with no regard whatsoever for those around them. Absurd is having them park their trucks and SUVs up and down the street and all over their yard. Absurd is the number of student neighbors (and vehicles) doubling or tripling on weekends for loud, offensive parties into the wee hours, leaving beer cans and trash strewn about for us to enjoy the rest of the week before the next party.
My experience may be atypical and that the vast majority of student renters may be wonderful, responsible neighbors. Unfortunately, that has not been my experience over the past few years. I believe it would also be absurd to think that the property owners and taxpayers of this community cannot protect themselves with the full support of their elected officials.
I urge those two groups, along with the leadership of the university, to act quickly and judiciously to address the two-edged issue of neighborhood integrity and student housing requirements for the benefit of all concerned.
MIKE NEWMAN
College Station
Mr. Newman and I are in nearly complete agreement. We agree that there is a problem in our neighborhoods caused by young people, many of whom do not have enough life experience to have a well developed sense of empathy. We both agree that something must be done. I am simply suggesting that the simplest thing to do may also be the most effective. There are other measure that can be considered as well, such as registering rental property and, as you hint at, restricting cheap sprawl development that is preventing the sort of high density development in the Northgate area that would make our neighborhoods less attractive for most students to live in.
I'll tell you what totally absurd, Hugh. It's the idea that people move into a college town and then think that, through legislation, they can become immune to problems with students.
It's totally absurd to expect students, who have seen their costs triple in the short time that tuition has been deregulated in Texas, to remain passive about a proposed ordinance that would shut them out of one of the few affordable housing options left --living four to a dwelling unit.
It's totally absurd to assume that a small group of homeowners can get away with penalizing the 90% of students who behave themselves in an effort to remove from their midst the 10% who have loud parties.
It's totally absurd for a distinguished professor turned city councilman, who has made his living by the grace of his students' enrollment, not to expect an electoral backlash--given the paltry numbers of citizens who usually vote in municipal elections in comparison to the number of students who cast ballots in rather meaningless campus voting.
It's totally absurd to expect those students to remain oblivious to what's happening on the other side of George Bush Drive when it threatens their right to live where they wish and to live affordable.
It's totally absurd to chide students without much life experience for their lack of developed empathy, while excusing by omission the the lack of empathy for those students who would be affected by the recently proposed reduction of non-related tenants from four to two.
Perhaps that's why Dr. Crompton declared in yesterday's Eagle that there was no "political consensus" in favor of such a measure. The real political consensus developed through the uniting of students into an organization to oppose the housing limitaton, and their efforts to distribute voter registration cards. That’s a consensus that the neighborhood activists would prefer not to see develop. But it’s not absurd.
Dave
Post a Comment