College housing crunch

Last week, the Boston Zoning Commission decided to limit the number of students legally able to occupy off-campus housing to a maximum of four students per residence. Officials say this will benefit communities by swaying rowdy college students from off-campus houses. We say this imposes serious limitations to the quality of life the city’s students are able to enjoy.\nThough it is inevitable that en masse collegiate habitation of residential neighborhoods will add a certain bohemian touch to the block, city officials’ recent proposal misidentifies the true cause of the “out of control” behavior deemed so distasteful by the Boston Zoning Commission Chairman, Robert Fondren. While four people living in an apartment might well create more noise than a single inhabitant, they are certainly not the cause of all-night college revelry. As anyone steeped in the tradition of the house party knows, the disturbance non-student residents report is caused by the music and noise of the hosts summed with the noise and booze of their guests. Because it is the number of parties rather than simply the number of residents creating the party’s decibel level, officials’ justifications for the new legislation simply do not conform to reason.\nWith its origins grounded in fictitious presumptions, one must wonder what the underlying causes of the initiative might be. Among other propositions, college students living off campus have suggested that residents’ true motivations are a broad-based distaste for students in general rather than any actual disturbance students might cause. Supporting this claim, some Boston-area students have facetiously suggested that “student” be replaced with the name of any minority group, and that attempts should be made to ban groups of this minority’s friends from living together in numbers greater than four to gauge the outrage the public should feel toward this measure.\nWe feel this test is particularly valid if justice in municipal zoning code is of concern. And from the words of the regulation’s sponsor himself, it would seem it is. The sponsor, councilor Michael Ross, has noted, “You can’t let profit dominate the public debate.” But as noble as this sounds, it leads us to ask: What moral factors outside of the profits of landlords and payments of financially strapped college students should be considered in regulations, and how should neighborhoods be made pleasant and inhabitable places?\nFirst, it is crucial that policy makers concerned with making residential areas accessible to families remember that students also suffer from limited budgets and that these students certainly do not have a more financially reasonable (either on campus or off) option than splitting the rent among a high number of friends. Driving students away from local colleges and universities because they cannot afford housing is hardly a viable way of achieving the mission of sustaining the community by attracting the same young professionals back to the neighborhood after graduation.\nSecond, if noise is truly an issue, then perhaps noise control ordinances rather than people ordinances are the most equitable option. Why not punish those who disturb the neighborhood rather than groups who make up the identity of a group that adds to the richness of the neighborhood itself?\nWhile city officials have managed to identify citizens’ key concerns about the policy, their current efforts fall short of making the community a better place for all its residents, students included.