Towns fight for limits on rowdy student neighbors

Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, underage drinking, public urination, Animal House behavior.

Those are perennial complaints in neighborhoods where college students live, local officials say. And with the start of the fall semester just a few weeks away, that's why they aggressively oppose a bill that would remove their restraints on student housing.

Sponsored by Rep. Sue Helm (R., Dauphin) and backed by landlords, it would prohibit rental discrimination against students and end limits on the numbers of unrelated people allowed to live in a house or apartment. In Upper Merion Township, for example, that number is two.

"This bill would have a devastating impact on Bryn Mawr, on Ardmore, and all of Lower Merion Township," said Commissioner Scott Zelov, who testified at a hearing in West Chester last week attended by Helm. Lower Merion, with six colleges in or near its borders, has a three-person limit.

In all, more than 50,000 students attend colleges and universities in Philadelphia's neighboring Pennsylvania counties, and campus housing hardly can accommodate all of them.

Disruptive behavior is inevitable when "you combine youthful exuberance with alcohol," said Carolyn Comitta, the mayor of West Chester, which hosts West Chester University's 15,000 students.

Helm, who argued that townships have ordinances to deal with public nuisances and underage drinking, got such an earful at the hearing that she promised "to go back to the drawing board" and redraft her proposed ordinance.

Whatever the outcome in Harrisburg, however, it almost certainly won't end student-neighborhood tensions along the Main Line, in West Chester, and elsewhere.

John Waters, Upper Merion's director of safety and code enforcement, says he has fielded more than one call from a resident reporting "an 'Animal House' " - a reference to the film about a raucous fraternity.

Towns have employed different strategies to reduce such calls.

Lower Merion, one of the region's most affluent townships, passed an ordinance limiting student housing in 1989, as neighborhoods near Villanova University, in neighboring Radnor Township, filled with student houses.

In addition to restrictions on the numbers of unrelated residents, in Lower Merion, houses cannot become student rental units unless they are 1,000 feet away from any other student residence.

Student houses and apartments that existed before 1989 have remained in place, Zelov said, but the law did reduce student residencies by 40 percent.

Even with an effective ordinance, Zelov said, he hears complaints.

The best solution, he said, would be housing all students on college campuses. Villanova University won approval this month from Radnor to build new dormitories that will increase the number of students living on campus by nearly 20 percent.

Other towns have followed the example of Lower Merion, whose ordinance has survived legal challenges. Radnor has similar restrictions, and Haverford and Tredyffrin Townships limit housing to three unrelated tenants. State College, home to Pennsylvania State University, also has an ordinance modeled after Lower Merion's.

West Chester limits student housing in some neighborhoods and requires landlords to have student rental licenses. The mayor said it is working well. Landlords disagree.

"I was definitely not happy with somebody telling me who I could and couldn't rent to," said Grant Nelson, a West Chester landlord.

"I don't want to have the government discriminating and telling people where they can live," said Nelson, who supports Helm's proposed bill.

Local efforts to enforce ordinances vary, and are driven by complaints from neighbors. Lower Merion makes appointments to inspect homes where they suspect there may be more than three students. But in Upper Merion, no enforcement measures are in place.

Waters, the code and safety enforcement director, said he gets about a dozen complaints a year from residents who say they live near loud students, and they suspect there are more than two of them.

"If five students moved into a house and they were very nice to their neighbors, no one would complain," Waters said.

Upper Merion does not track student rentals, so its only option is sending a letter to property owners.

Rep. Kate Harper (R., Montgomery), chair of the House Local Government Committee, said she sees both sides, but would not support eliminating student housing restrictions across the state.

"What works in one municipality may not work in the other 2,400," she said.

In testimony last week, she heard officials say they appreciated having colleges in their towns. But she also heard statistics of police complaints, crime rates, and a loss of property tax revenue as families leave student neighborhoods.

Regardless of housing ordinances, that tension is likely to persist.

"They're a tremendous asset," Comitta, the West Chester mayor, said of college students. "They also can behave in annoying ways."

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