The Southeast University Neighborhood Association and 4th District Syracuse Common Councilor Khalid Bey have proposed legislation to regulate the spread of student housing in the neighborhood near University Hill.

If passed by the Common Council, the ordinance will define a “student residence” in the city zoning code as any residential dwelling occupied by three to five students. It would then require landlords to annually license these residences with the city through a registry application that includes renters’ names and the university they attend, according to the proposed legislation.

The ordinance would apply only to the Special Neighborhood District, according to the legislation, and any legally operating student rentals in the area would be grandfathered in. If a student rental fails to rent to students or apply for a license renewal for 12 months or more, it would lose its grandfather status.

The proposed legislation was brought to the Common Council as a talking point last week, Common Councilor At-Large Kathleen Joy said. Joy said nothing formal has been brought before the council, and the proposed legislation is in a very preliminary discussion stage.

Continued dialogue is necessary to address the conflicting interests of residents, landlords and students in the area, she said.

“It’s a really difficult balancing act, and that’s the discussion we need to have,” she said. “We’re not going to change things just for the sake of changing things.”

The proposed legislation comes in response to the overturn of an ordinance last March that required the number of bedrooms in a student rental to meet the number of available off-street parking spaces, said Michael Stanton, president of SEUNA. This essentially prevented the conversion of homes with more than three bedrooms into student rentals.

Although the overturned ordinance was unique to Syracuse, the new proposed ordinance is in effect in at least 13 municipalities in four states, Stanton said. In one of these, Lower Merion Township, Pa., the ordinance was challenged and upheld through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

This is an encouraging sign for Syracuse, Stanton said. If the Common Council passes the proposed legislation, he said it would probably be implemented by early April.

Although the number of students in the neighborhood has not increased since it peaked in 1990, students are now moving closer to campus, he said.

“In 1990, the majority of the students living in the area had been east of Lancaster,” he said. “That’s been changing year after year.”

Stanton said he hoped the ordinance would maintain the status quo in the neighborhood and stop landlords from “swooping in” to buy homes close to campus.

Ben Tupper, who owns 49 student rentals and is the landlord to about 340 SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry students as owner of Tupper Property Management, said landlords of owner-occupant houses have contacted him for about 10 of the last 15 homes he bought.

In general, these families moved out of the neighborhood not because of students, Tupper said, but because of the school district or job availability.

“The neighborhood is what it is. It’s a great mix of people,” Tupper said, adding that he has lived in the areasince the 1980s and that it has always been a student neighborhood.

Tupper said he opposed the proposed ordinance, saying it was an attempt to reduce the number of students in the neighborhood and was not good governance. He also said he opposed the registry that would require landlords to submit the names of renters to the city, describing it as a “gross violation of privacy.”

“The university neighborhood is awesome,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be fixed.”

Published on February 17, 2013 at 10:52 pm