City cracking down on overstuffed student apartments in the Fenway

Hoping!

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.

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.

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.

Or are you really saying that low-income families with children in East Boston and Dorchester are being given preferential treatment over BU and Northeastern undergrads?? And again...you're equating this with homophobia?

Two other points: being a "student" is not a "profession"--it's almost be definition a non-profession so I can't imagine why you'd think anyone would have an abiding "hatred" of students. Second--it seems very clear that this stemmed from a long history of complaints from neighbors in student-heavy areas re overcrowding, noise, etc. if there were similar complaints from neighbors in East Boston or Dot, then surely we'd see more regulation. As far as "hot-sheeting" goes, we've seen plenty of buildings targeted as problem buildings re prostution or drugs but there doesn't seem to be a rampant overcrowding/quality of life issue in these neighborhoods.

If this is an April Fool's joke in very poor taste, you need to stop it. Now.

If it isn't an April Fool's joke in very poor taste, you need your head examined.

Either way, you're being a grade-A jerk.

I am for overcrowding statutes and code inspections and safe housing laws being fairly applied. If a large number of people in a small apartment is unsafe, then a large number of people in a small apartment is ... UNSAFE. Period.

You obviously choose to forget what happens when one of these large families has six kids crowded around a space heater in a small room, right? Like, they all die horribly? The last such mass casualty event wasn't that long ago. Smaller tragedies of a similar nature in overcrowded conditions happen more frequently.

I guess that's okay because its a family dying together and your deity of choice loves dead babies? Because there's more where that came from? Because they are poor?

Hence my problems with this approach to targetting the "type" of tenant, rather than the conditions that landlords are allowed to perpetuate. Ross' nonsense about students is not about safety in the least - it is about grandstanding politics and not offending his friends who own code-deficient properties.

Children in large families deserve to be safe, too.