Neighborhood hopes to limit encroachment of student housing
Residents in Whitewater's Historic Starin Park area hope a new zoning proposal will help preserve the integrity of their neighborhood.
The proposal, with the rather dry title of "Non-Family Residential Overlay District Zoning," would limit the number of non-related residents in a single-family home to two.
Current zoning allows for three, which neighborhood residents fear will allow for the growth of student-type housing.
Off-campus student housing has been an issue in Whitewater for years. In 2008, reporter Kayla Bunge chronicled some of the problems, including a growing campus population stretching the limits of on-campus housing, and landlords bending existing zoning rules.
The Jefferson Daily Union reports that the Whitewater City Council Thursday gave its blessing to the plan, which now must go before the Planning and Architectural Review Commission May 10 for a public hearing.
If the commission approves, its back to the city council for a final vote.
The Historic Starin Park Neighborhood area includes most properties on North Esterly, North Franklin, Park Street, part of Starin Road, along with a few smaller properties in the area.
Here's the proposal in a nutshell: "to stabilize and protect property values and to provide a mechanism to protect, preserve, and enhance essential characteristics of low-density single-family residential areas, in particular, areas where due to economic factors and housing pressure in the immediate area, there is the potential for the reduction of family occupied residencies, and therefore the loss of the single-family character of the neighborhood which will potentially lead to overcrowding, undue population concentration, and lower property values."
Apr 12, 2010 at 4:07 p.m.
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Perhaps if the property owners who rented to the students took a more active role in keeping an eye on the property(cough, cough DLK) and looking at who they rent to, there would not be so many issues. Also, the area in question is on the way home from the bars/parties for many students, so a lot of the damage is caused by people who don't even live in this neighborhood, but are simply passing through.
Apr 12, 2010 at 2:26 p.m.
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unless you live in Whitewater, you would not understand what is happening there... The students drive the rental prices in the city, and it makes rent very unaffordable for the working class people that cannot afford to purchase a home, but enjoy living there.
Apr 12, 2010 at 12:23 p.m.
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The college has always had a love-hate relationship with commuter students. They love their money, but would rather people stay on or near campus all the time. At the first chance they get though, they kick them off campus during Thanksgiving and Spring break, but I digress.
My point before is that anyone who owns a house near the campus area should have known a long time ago that it was only a matter of time before the campus housing situation expanded to include their areas. The same forces that have caused this expansion aren't wholly under the control of the college either and those students must have a place to live.
It's like the homeless, in a way. You can legislate them away if you think it would work, but it doesn't change the fact that they're going to be there, under the radar. Removing landlords will only encourage property owners to rent under the radar. Restricting those landlords will only encourage those students to lie about their situations.
Apr 12, 2010 at 11:57 a.m.
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How can they legally have this prejudice, the landlords? A single family home? One bedroom, two bedrooms, three? That is really biased I think. Not all college students are drunks are roughnecks! Some one explain this to me, will you?
Apr 12, 2010 at 11:46 a.m.
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I'm not sure how foreseeing it invalidates their effort. Anyway, this isn't about the institution itself, it's about the landlords who buy houses there and rent to students, something that has recently seen a sharp increase due to a dormitory shortage on campus. There are changes to the various curricula that have encouraged more on-campus students vs. commuter students, as well as an ongoing renovation project that this year had hundreds of students displaced.
http://gazettextra.com/news/2010/feb/19/...
Apr 12, 2010 at 10:09 a.m.
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Not to disparage their efforts, but they should have seen this coming. It's not like the college is well hidden. Such institutions tend to grow and as they do, so does the need for places to put students.
The reality of the situation is that even if this passes, it won't stop progress forever.
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