The council reaffirmed a law June 7 requiring landlords to provide one parking space for every bedroom in new rental property. The law applies to property in the Special Neighborhood District, the area southeast of the Syracuse University campus.

 

‘The goal of the law is to make a balanced neighborhood where students and permanent residents can live side by side,’ said Harry Lewis, treasurer of the South East University Neighborhood Association, an organization that supports the law.

 

Since the law has been reaffirmed, there have been concerns about the affect it will have on landlords and SU students who want to live off campus.

 

Ben Tupper, a Syracuse landlord, said he understood the law was made with good intentions, such as to increase the number of available parking spaces and to decrease the density of students in the neighborhood. But the law will hurt more people than it helps, he said.

 

Hundreds of houses will be deemed uninhabitable because they cannot be legally rented without sufficient parking space, Tupper said. If landlords have to board up houses, it will attract crime and property values will decrease, he said.

 

‘For all the complaining that homeowners do about students, the fact is that it has made their property values skyrocket,’ he said.

 

Homeowners often complain about students who live off campus because they can be careless and disruptive by not picking up their trash or having parties at night, Tupper said. Tupper said he thought these are small complaints that can be managed through ‘civil interaction’ and cannot be resolved by enforcing this law, he said.

 

But Lewis, a resident of the neighborhood, said the complaints were not the main reason for reaffirming the law.

 

‘The students are so much better than they were 20 years ago – more mature, more understanding, more everything,’ he said. ‘If we had too many complaints, we would not live here.’

 

The law was passed to create a ‘homey atmosphere’ for students and to bring new families into the neighborhood, Lewis said.

 

‘The purpose of the law is to try to attempt to keep the area around SU, the southeast area, from becoming a complete student ghetto,’ he said.

 

Many landlords are against the law because it prevents them from buying a house and turning it into a rental home to make more money, Lewis said. But the law might also protect students because it will put pressure on the landlords to provide houses that are approved for student housing, he said.

 

But Tupper said if residents are trying to lessen the number of students in the area, this law will not do it. Students will continue to look for other off-campus housing because they usually do not want to spend four years living in a dorm, he said.

 

Their presence close to campus may become less dense, but student neighborhoods will spread deeper away from campus, Tupper said. Students will be pushed out farther into the neighborhood by two or three blocks.

 

Students footprints are getting bigger, Tupper said, and it is ironic because this is what most homeowners do not want.

 

Neal Casey, the chair of the student life committee for Student Association, said the relationship between the students living off campus and the community members needs to be re-examined to find a solution that meets both groups’ needs. Students need to be engaged in their neighborhoods and permanent residents need to reach out to students to work together and develop personal connections, he said.

 

‘The university is not going anywhere, so we need to find a way to co-exist,’ Casey said.

 

Students are vital contributions to the neighborhood, Tupper said. They bring energy and vitality to the community, and people have to realize that there are good and bad aspects of living in a college neighborhood, he said. 

 

‘People are shortsighted and naive, in their utopian vision of how they want their neighborhood to be,’ Tupper said.