News flash for Evanston: Northwestern students aren’t going anywhere.
In response to this year’s tight budget, the city is considering very little additional spending — except in one area targeted at regulating off-campus students. The city is hoping to re-emphasize a tool it possesses that can limit students’ options and force them out of some apartment buildings.
But the question that remains is where — in a city growing more unfriendly to development and the university — these students are supposed to go.
Included in the proposed budget, which aldermen are expected to approve Monday, is money for an additional housing inspector who would specifically target the area around campus between Noyes and Emerson streets and as far west as Asbury Avenue. The role of this inspector is, generally, to ensure that residences are up to city code. But what is not mentioned when aldermen discuss the issue is another of the inspector’s duties: enforcing zoning laws related to overcrowding.
In a prime example of how ridiculous zoning laws can be, the city has an ordinance that prevents more than three unrelated people from living in an apartment together, no matter how large the unit. Meaning even in a four- or five-bedroom unit, only three students can live there — unless, by some strange stroke of luck, they happen to be related.
The ordinance itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the city is going to approve buildings with units that large, it seems it should allow them to be full. I live legally in a two-bedroom apartment with one other person, but I can’t imagine how the owners of larger units could survive if students did not rent illegally.
And the overcrowding defense given — mainly pertaining to traffic and parking — doesn’t seem to add up. In case the wise people at the city have not realized, most off-campus students do not have cars. In fact, student apartments likely draw the same if not fewer cars than the average residence with nonstudent occupants.
But the general absurdity of the ordinance is not the only problem: It is also the timing and the context. The city, both its government and its residences, have shown an increasingly unwelcoming attitude toward students. Efforts such as a nuisance ordinance and increased calls to police have made students feel even more like residents do not want them around — a feeling many of their neighbors likely would support.
Although certain concerns should be met, the hysteria of some near campus has reached a preposterous level. After all, the residents did decide to live near a college campus.
But the poor timing grows even worse. A moratorium on construction is currently in effect in the Fifth Ward, which includes much of the off-campus-student area. In previous discussions of projects in that region, it was the problem of students that was cited as the biggest concern in creating new apartment complexes.
The institutional problem between the city and NU also causes friction. The university is almost guaranteed not to be able to build west of Sheridan Road — with the lawsuit preventing even an NU-owned piece of land north of the Foster-Walker Complex from being developed — and the space on the east side has grown tight as well. With inadequate space in dorms to fit the entire student body, off-campus apartments are necessary. Students have to live somewhere. There aren’t any bridges in town to live under.
At issue is that no one seems to want to acknowledge the complexity of the problem. Any plans toward the campus-area residences need to take into account not only the complaints of neighbors but also the reality of the student presence.
A more worthwhile approach would be accept the inherent conflict and not pursue petty methods of resolution. Because the “not in my backyard” attitude some residents have adopted will only prove to further strain relationships — and the situation can’t afford to get any worse.
Assistant City Editor Matt Lopas is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
