Rental homes might face additional restrictions
May 14, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
The Duluth City Council is exploring new ways to slow the proliferation of student rental housing in neighborhoods once dominated by quiet, single-family homes.
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“We haven’t determined to what degree this is a problem, and we don’t want to overreact,” Gardner said. If that is the case then why does Stauber feel a sense of urgency to move on it? What isn’t mentioned here is that there is no grandfather clause to this ordinance – if you currently have a rental house with more than 4 bedrooms you are out of luck. This is a terrible ordinance and is bad for rental owners and will only increase the rent on renters who can’t afford it.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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READ!!
“Boyle’s new ordinance… was pulled by city administration Monday for clarification ensuring that existing rental properties with more than four bedrooms would be allowed to continue uninterrupted operations, thanks to a grandfather clause.”
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Where will all those college students live that are going to stay and save Duluth?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Duluth continues to have the “not in my back yard”/anti-small business attitude. This is more “weapons of mass distraction” What about the real problems in Duluth? How is that unfunded health care liability doing?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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When the “small business” in question is an absentee slumlord I’m pretty OK with regulation.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Not all property owners are “slum lords”. I would never want to own property in Duluth where they way over step the bounds and use of eminent domain and over regulation.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Your reading comprehension could use some work. I never suggested that everyone who owns rental property in Duluth is a slum lord.
As for over-regulation, Duluth isn’t bad at all. The Duluth inspectors are pushovers if you actually care about meeting code.
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Once again the City is getting their attack on rental properties wrong…. Go after the landlords that are not responsible and leave the responsible ones alone! I find the timing of this ordinance very very suspicious!!!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Last time “students packed the council chambers” it was a result of the same scare tactics currently being used by some landlords by telling the students it will increase their rent. An out of town landlord who owns 20+ properties rented a bus and transported the students to the meeting. This go around students are being offered gas money to come to the meeting. The landlords are not concerned with providing better housing, but rather protecting the income they enjoy by renting a house with 6 families paying rent that one family would find too steep. Having 5 roommates and having to sleep in basements & dining rooms, share 1 bathroom & park in the front yard is not the best housing that can be offered to our students. Landlords collect “per head” (typically $350 – $400 x 6) making this out of reach for anyone else such as families or the young professionals Duluth wants to attract. Do the math.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I think the Patrick Boyle approach is well- reasoned and will do much to preserve traditional neighborhoods. A drive along Woodland and Arrowhead Roads will demonstrate the need for changes to the ordinance. Montee is a student landlord and does not do a good job when it comes to maintaining her property.
The planned Woodland Jr. High adaptive reuse will go a long way to making this “small business” opportunity less in demand. 800 students will be housed there when it is done.
Sometimes people don’t realize that over- populated student housing spreads like crab grass…once one home in a neighborhood converts to student housing, the marketability of those homes on either side are affected in a very negative way…and so on and so on until we have whole areas which have converted making it impossible for the hold-out or long -term homeowners to sell their homes at any reasonable price for other than this use. With the proliferation of nice, new, safe, student housing on the horizon the market for these conversion homes will plummit and then what is left?…a bunch of run-down homes with parking lots versus front lawns.
This would be a good weekend to drive the student housing area and see all of the cast-off junk students have left behind…this is some measure of the problem.
Students are not the problem, in many cases, it is irresponsible and greedy landlords that are.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Poorly-rated. Like or Dislike:
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I’m fine with whatever happens inside these homes.
But these kids just don’t respond well to liquor.
-and they’re not bright enough to make drunk entertaining.
So they should stay inside once they start drinking- THAT should be the rule.
They get outside and it’s just… not Animal House (sigh).
Mostly it’s loud, littering, wandering dolts, vaguely vandalizing our neighborhoods, matched in apathy only by local police.
How about enforcing rules that already exist?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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A “gated community.” Where did that come from? I know of not a single gated community in the city, nor is it apparent that access to housing has any barriers. The only barrier to getting home is oftentimes the crappy roads we have to drive on to get there.
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Once people start wising up a bit, students will be paying mortgages instead of landlords. College students may be problematic, that’s true… But so is the litany of slumlords in this town who feel entitled to fleece renters out of $20,000/year for a run-down 5BR house that’s only really worth $60,000.
Once a few more bubbles burst, we’ll start seeing prices normalize across the board. Then the council will have a whole new set of issues to deal with.
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Duluth created its own mess and refuses to address the root of the problem. Everyone was so pleased when UMD increased head count year over year, but no one had the brains to wonder where all these students were going to live, they were all too busy being pleased with themselves. Now we have year upon year of knee jerk reactions from the city council, all directed at landlords. Until someone can pull their head out and realize that the only way to fix this problem is to address the root cause (unfettered student growth and no plan for housing) we are going to keep getting one bad idea after other from the city council. Especially with the current brain trust.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Does the city of Duluth have any control over what UMD does, as far as expansion?
I would agree that UMD’s failure to provide adaquate housing is a large part of the problem but, I don’t know if the city has any actual means of controlling what they do or do not do, as far as housing.
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Direct control no. But a council and planning dept with brains would be able to exert a lot of control. Better yet would have been UMD and Duluth working together to plan and solve the problem before it got to the point of having the short sighted city council take matters into their own hands.
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It seems to me that the city HAS approached the school on at least a few occassions and pretty much gotten an “it’s not our problem” type of response.
The city is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they have people screaming that landlords are being treated unfairly and should be able to rent as many apartments in as many houses as they choose.
On the other hand, they have people screaming that they want their ‘family’ neighborhoods protected.
Looks like a no-win situation.
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