City cracking down on overstuffed student apartments in the Fenway

None. But most college kids don't know that and will let them in if they demand it. The average person is more than happy nowadays to "cooperate" with the government even when it's to their own detriment.

First, I think there are

By Reason for Rules
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:00am

First, I think there are rules on how many people can live in an apartment at once and if so, they are obligated to follow the rules. The rules exist so kids don't die in house fires like they did in Allston a few years ago. It is not their detriment it is for their safety. Please do not give libertarian opinions without giving both sides of the argument.

Please, its the city gov over reaching

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:10am

They tried to inspect my grandfathers two family home (which he lives in) because it contained a rental unit (which a family member lives in). My grandfather being from the great generation that he is, politely told the city employee to go ____ himself!

Further he's failed to pay their fee and nothing has ever come of it...

Its another BS ordnance..

http://www.cityofboston.gov/isd/housing/rental.asp

Wow

By Reason for Rules
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:28pm

What hero he is /s...

Unconstitutional

By matthewm
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 9:29pm

When is this ordinance going to be ruled unconstitutional? I'm not a lawyer, but it may violate First Amendment rights to free assembly and/or Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection (because it only applies to students).

A crackdown could yield a test case.

Maybe a real lawyer could chime in.

very unlikely to be found unconstitutional

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 2:05am

Not a lawyer, but interested in constitutional law.

I cannot imagine how the free assembly clause would apply here. Assembly refers to a temporary gathering, where the participants express something. Living in an apartment with someone is not an "assembly".

It might be possible to challenge this ordinance under the equal protection clause, but government treats different groups differently all the time (for example, the elderly, disabled, or veterans get benefits that the rest of us don't get). These types of laws are judged on a pretty lenient standard, the rational basis test, which pretty much means that the law would be found constitutional unless the plaintiffs could show that it served no legitimate government interest. But the city could very easily argue that reducing the various problems associated with having huge numbers of college kids living together off campus is a legitimate government interest.

using your logic

By SatansFist
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 7:20am

those fire safety codes that limit the number of people at a bar or concert venue would also have to be removed...

your argument does not apply

This isn't limiting the number of people

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:13am

Case in point: you can still have a family of ten living in the same unit where you are forbidden to have 5 undergraduate adults.

It also applies equally to a 2000 square foot house and a 700 square foot two bedroom.

Maybe Mike Ross should move to Indiana - they like his kind of thinking there. This isn't about crowding, but about greed and categorical hate.

Greed? Categorical hate--huh??

By Sally
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:35am

Whose greed exactly? How about the landlords who let this kind of thing go on because they sure can squeeze a lot more money out of a rundown apartment by renting it to eight students than one family with five kids. I'm having a hard time seeing college students as big victims here.

I'm honestly not seeing your quibble with this. Overcrowding is a bad idea and demonstrably unsafe and it makes for very unpleasant living conditions for ordinary working folks living nearby (ask anyone who's done time in Brighton or Allston). And check back on the weekend coming soon when students move out and we're awash in trash to ponder why yes, maybe there should be some different rules for student housing.

Given that it's April 1st, I

By tofu
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:05am

Given that it's April 1st, I find it easier to digest SwrlyGrl's posts if you just assume they're crafted with today in mind.
(gah, it's becoming the "stay off the internet" day)

That did occur to me...

By Sally
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 10:24am

Hoping!

Why is it more unsafe to have

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:54am

Why is it more unsafe to have 6 undergraduates than a family of 6? It seems like the law shouldn't be about whether the people you live with are related to you or not if its supposed to be about safety. Its real intent seems to be to dilute and spread out the students, who are an easy target for politicians since many don't vote in Boston making them an easy target, like immigrants, to place blame on.

Rational basis

By matthewm
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:06am

The commenter who makes a point about "rational basis" and the 14th amendment makes a fair point. But anon makes the counterargument to the rational basis claim. I suppose it depends how the courts see it.

Honestly I deal with this

By Kayk
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 10:46pm

Honestly I deal with this ordinance a lot for work and many of its biggest proponents and supporters are the people who have to live next to these overcrowded student apartments. When apartments are crammed full of students it causes rents to go up for families in the area and huge quality of life issues. Fenway and Allston Brighton have the lowest home ownership rates in the city and it's getting worse because investors are buying all the available space and stuffing students into it. Students are obviously not the only people who live in over crowded conditions but they are a lot more likely to cause issues in the neighborhoods and be living unsafely if their apartments are overcrowded.

Yet it seems that the same people

By roadman
Fri, 04/03/2015 - 1:30pm

who live next to these student apartments are the same ones who habitually object when the universities propose building dorms to house their students.

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

There's an App for that

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 6:25pm

The owner/landlord would have to have apply for a "rooming house" license for more than X unrelated people living in a unit alone together.
Students are not a protected class, but wondering how 6 unmarried unrelated people who are cohabitating as couples would fare - if they were married to eachother they'd be able to stay there?
so perhaps discrimination against singletons / or marital status?
anyway.... if the tenants were more respectful and the landlords took better care of their property this would not be an issue.
Parts of Allston and Brighton have been ruined by disrespectful students/greedy landlords who don't show any love to their surroundings.

Doesn't the Bill of Rights

By anon
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 9:32pm

Doesn't the Bill of Rights say no searches without warrants?

Not a search legally.

By Pete Nice
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 3:35am

It is an inspection.

Graduate Students Okay?

By FenRes
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 9:37pm

I'm wondering about the specificity of "undegraduate" students, does that mean 5 or more graduate students, or for that matter, adults in general, can share a unit?

What makes an "undergrad?"

By matthewm
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 11:24pm

What if you're working toward an undergraduate degree but taking mostly graduate courses?
What if you're working toward a graduate degree but taking mostly undergraduate courses?
What if you're in a five-year joint undergraduate-graduate degree program?

A dumb law speaks for itself.

I have been affected by

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:22am

I have been affected by undergrad rules before, landlord refused to lease a building to me and my friends since one was an undergrad. He had a silent agreement that he wouldn't let undergrads into 90% of his apartments to get approval for new construction on mission hill.

Basically if you go to college and don't plan on graduating your undergrad degree during your lease you can be treated like you are a second class citizen

I Wish He Ran This Building

By BlackKat
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 7:43am

I would love a building that bans college students. With very few exceptions they are all overly loud and too entitled to care they are loud.

Okay

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:14am

What do you do for a living? Perhaps we can attribute poor behavior to your profession, and come up with a blanket ban on, say, all bike couriers, anyone with tattoos, all nurses and doctors and other people who have these night shifts that mean that they wake other tenants when they leave, etc.

Why stop there? Hell, in Indiana you can just make up whatever shit you want and say "its my religion"!

College students (bros,

By tofu
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:07am

College students (bros, mostly) are statistically loud and obnoxious. Bike couriers aren't. Your argument is invalid.

Ivory Tower [or single family home as it were]

By BlackKat
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:09am

It's easy to throw stones from your single family home. Because you are not currently living in a multi-unit building. And I really don't understand why you are being so hostile. You get a lot of unwarranted hostility here and it seems odd that you would in turn try to throw some around yourself.

College students, by and large, are not responsible or adult enough to be given free reign. They need to live in controlled environments to keep them safe from themselves, from others, and to keep others safe from their excesses. That is not to say you won't find older residents who cause noise or party issues, or young residents that do not. But those are outliers. I quite admit that if any of my neighbors when I was college aged had an issue with myself or the people I lived with they were probably very justified. Because we were not responsible residents.

Nor are landlords responsible enough to be given free reign. The majority of investor owners of real estate have only one bottom line. Money. Do you really want companies like Alpha Management to have no oversight? I would think, owning a home, you would want some assurance that the others around you are not engaging in illegal activities, or deferring maintenance. As those things can affect your own, personal property value not to mention current quality of life.

And in answer to your question above, anyone in any shared living environment, regardless of their schedule or career or age, has a responsibility to be a considerate neighbor. People single out college students because many if not most are loud. If nurses, as a group, had a reputation of being loud they too might be singled out. We're not talking about being irritated that someone is walking down the stairs at 3AM. We are talking about being irritated that someone is blasting dubstep and vomitting in the hall at 3AM.

Many do

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 10:01am

Most new construction around Fenway has deed restrictions around housing undergrads

Mike Ross was the force

By Riggs not logged in
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:45am

Mike Ross was the force behind this, if you recall.

I thought Mr. Ross was a fairly benign mediocrity, but then he shoved this absurd ordinance down Boston's throat. When it passed ... welp, I had many feelings.

"Rubbish" is the polite one that comes to mind. I've never done a faster 180 on someone as I did when Councilor Ross managed to get this stupidity passed.

He should be ashamed of himself.

Grad student slaves

By Markk02474
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 2:31pm

See - exploitation of grad students, post-docs, med school students, and interns condoned! Pack them in more than five per.

When you're not stuck like a broken record...

By lbb
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:56pm

...you're irrelevant, Markkkkk. As you are here. This is about apartment rentals, son, not about university hiring practices. I know it's pretty much impossible for you, but please try to stick to the topic.

Great timing

By ChrisInEastie
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 9:48pm

Do it in April when the school year is almost over and a month and a half before most students take off for the summer anyway.

Better late than never?

So, do you really have a lot

By Riggs not logged in
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:55am

So, do you really have a lot of problems out in Eastie with more than four undergrads living in the same unit? Really?

(How does one get to that far off place in under two hours by the T or a $60 Uber anyways? I need to know ...)

Mike Ross deliberately wrote an ordinance to focus on (that is, *punish!*) landlords and potential lettors in the Back Bay, Fenway/Kenmore, South End, and Roxbury Crossing (Mission Hill).

So, please, stop clutching your pearls so tightly. You'll give yourself a muscle spasm.

nope

By cybah
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:01am

but I can speak for Chris. He may not have college kids, but he may have other people living four or more to a unit.

Eastie, like Chelsea, where i live.. which btw has a similar ordinance.. has many people living in small apartments. Way over crowded. Like 8+ in a 2 bedroom.

The city of Chelsea did a sweep last year and was amazed at some of the living conditions. They not only do it to assist with the 8+ people living in a small apartment issue, but make sure landlords are doing their job. The city found many were absentee landlords were just neglecting property and tenant issues, everything from over crowding to just unsafe living conditions. And since many tenants have immigration issues, many do not come forward with complaints so they just accept it when we have laws that protect tenants.

It's justified. If landlords did their job and not neglect their properties and perform their own inspections on tenants to prevent many of these overcrowding and safety issues, we wouldn't need to do this. But since they don't, it needs to be done every so often.

This moronic ordinance isn't about crowding

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:16am

Because they wouldn't think to boot an extended family of twelve from the same 1500 square foot unit where they might harass five students.

Even when they have six kids sleeping on a floor around a space heater.

I'm sorry

By cybah
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:34am

It's not moronic. I'm sorry swirls, I just disagree. I see overcrowding and unsafe conditions in my town in rental units. If we didn't have inspections, we would have 8-10 people live in a 2 bedroom.

I read the city ISD reports. It happens. It shouldn't happen. And happens more often than you think.

Maybe the thing about students in Boston is different, but in my town, over crowding is a very real thing along with unsafe and unsanitary living conditions where I live.

Edit: here's a link from the Chelsea Record when the city passed the ordinance. They were shocked themselves:

http://www.chelsearecord.com/2014/03/28/council-pa...

NOT A SAFETY CODE

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 10:38am

This isn't a safety code, but thanks for reading carefully.

So you're saying we SHOULD boot the family, just to be fair?

By Sally
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:40am

Try to rent an apartment in this town with kids--let alone six kids and see how far you get. Every slumlord in Boston is eager to get students--no hassles about lead paint, mom and dad will pony up the rent. Families...not so much. Not to mention it's just plain easier to cover the rent when you've got seven adults chipping in and not two parents with kids (those freeloading little jerks). Sorry--I'm just not feeling the sympathy here.

Is this about safety?

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 11:16am

Or is this about hating on students?

If it is about safety ENFORCE THE SAFETY CODES. That means, yes, fifteen people in a two-bedroom apartment is unsafe regardless of their genetic commonalities. That means code violations are unsafe, regardless of the activities of the residents. That means that seven unrealated non-students are as much of a hazard as seven unrelated students.

The student part should not matter in the least. Ever.

Right

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 1:35pm

It shouldn't matter to some do as i say clown living in a single family house. It does, however, matter to those living in apartment buildings, who don't like finding pools of vomit I'm the elevators, being awakened by drunken screams at three in the morning, having their car windows smashed up by a bunch of drunk 18 year old idiots, etc.

First and foremost Riggs

By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 1:37pm

I'd like to congratulate you for one of the dumbest responses I've ever had the pleasure of engaging with on uHub.

My comment has nothing to do with where I live, who wrote the (stupid) law, or why. Simply that they've waited to do it until the end of the school year, which seems kind of dumb. I guess you could look at it as a preventative measure for next year, but even that's a stretch.

Where I live has nothing to do with it, though I am sorry that you apparently do have to deal with living around overcrowded student apartments.

For the record, I've lived in Allston and my girlfriend lives in Fenway (not with 5 other people), so I've spent/spend plenty of time in both neighborhoods. Which again has nothing to do with anything, but will apparently give my comment more credibility with you.

And as far as your very banal and predictable "Eastie is so far" comment: it's not. You can get downtown faster from East Boston than you can from Allston or Brookline, both of which you can get to from Eastie, or to Eastie from in 45 mins or less on the T, even WITH the Government Center closure. MAYBE a little more than an hour at rush hour because of Green Line stops. I also pay much less in rent for a much larger place with significantly better amenities, with better parking and less crime than many other residential neighborhoods in the city. Not to mention I have the ocean up the street, 3 grocery stores and a Target within a 5 min drive, and the best views of the city you can get from within city limits.

This may be useful to reference as well.

but

By SatansFist
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 7:22am

the landlord still pays the fine. the student's year goes uninterrupted. why make the student the victim of what the landlord should have enforced?

hmmf

By Scumquistador
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 10:25pm

This law has never affected me personally (too old >< ) but I think it is honestly pretty fucked up and pretty unamerican

Who did it

By JohnAKeith
Tue, 03/31/2015 - 10:30pm

Who's the snitch?

Snitches get...

By exMasshole
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 12:20am

...Stitches

the schools, obviously. they

By anon
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 6:48am

the schools, obviously. they finally gave in to the cities demands for addresses.

Schools are not legally allowed to do that

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 8:17am

I suggest that you look up the federal privacy rules that were upheld in court when Mr. Indiana Ross tried to grandstand.

Are you seriously comparing housing inspections

By Sally
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:18am

related to overcrowding to anti-gay discrimination laws? Seriously??

These are not related to overcrowding

By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 9:23am

If they were, we would see crackdowns in Eastie and Dorchester and parts of the city where people hotsheet two bedroom apartments.

The anti-student ordinance is categorical hatred based on profession. Pure and simple. If overcrowding is the problem, crack down on over crowding. If code violations are a problem, crack down on code violations.

It is that simple.

Also, please note the comment that you replied to. Indiana Ross tried to force Northeastern and BU to cough up lists, and they told him to go fish as federal law prohibits them from divulging student information.

City cracking down on overstuffed student apartments in the Fenway

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