Boston College senior Brandon Dean Daly lived in a house in Brighton last year with a ... few ... of his classmates.
"The state inspector did come around while we were moving in and he asked my roommate how many people are living in this house, to which he replied, '17,'" Daley said. "And the state inspectors eyes bugged out and said, 'are you serious?'"
In the city of Boston, there’s a zoning ordinance — clear as day — that says that no more than four undergraduate students can live in the same off-campus house or apartment. And yet, as you might expect, it happens all the time — and it can have a significant impact on the surrounding neighborhood.
Daley and his 16 roommates moved right in and spent the entire year living there. It’s this kind of thing that drives longtime Brighton homeowner Joanne D’Alcomo — a lawyer by trade — right up a wall.
"The ordinance has no teeth," D'Alcomo said. "The city isn’t doing anything about it."
D’Alcomo believes the problem is particularly pronounced in her neighborhood, near BC, where, with a few exceptions, all juniors are required to move off-campus due to a lack of on-campus housing. Most of them then move back on campus senior year.
"Transience is the worst thing — or one of the worst things for neighborhood stabilization," she said.
D’Alcomo says this annual churn of one-year renters, and the city’s lack of action, has emboldened landlords and investors to convert building after building in her neighborhood into apartments specifically for students, with too many bedrooms — and rent that’s too high. As an example, she points to a building around the corner from her home.
"It’s assessed as a four-bedroom unit, it was just sold as having four bedrooms," she said. "But even before the transaction occurred, the new owner-investors were marketing it as a six-bedroom, without making any changes."
If D’Alcomo is counting on the city to beef up their efforts to enforce the so-called “no more than four” ordinance, she is likely to be disappointed.
"Based on everything the way it’s written now, it’s unenforceable," said William Christopher, commissioner of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department, or ISD — the folks charged with enforcing the zoning rule. "For example, first I have to be allowed into the apartment to see that that many people live there. And then I also have to have the students identify to me what their status of college is."
And Christopher is not empowered under the law to compel anyone to do so.
"I mean, it’s a right to privacy that we can’t get around," he said.
So in January, after colleges turned over the addresses of students living off campus, ISD visited 500 places deemed to be potential "no more than four" violators. Not a single citation was issued. And last week, as thousands of students moved into apartments throughout the city, some 4,000 fines and citations were levied against landlords, for everything from a lack of smoke detectors to unsanitary conditions. No- more-than-four violations? Not a single one. Christopher says that even if he could enforce the rule, it would do little to curb overcrowding — or make students safer.
"We are not compromising the life safety of our children any way, any form at all, and I want people to understand that this undergraduate zoning amendment does not speak to life safety," he said.
Lest residents like D’Alcomo be completely discouraged, Christopher says that he believes a new solution is on the horizon. Under the direction of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Christopher says his work over the past year has been as much about gathering and analyzing data as it has been about enforcing current law.
"ISD has been studying this and studying this and studying it," he said. "We’ve run a number of different scenarios. So we think we are somewhat of a resident expert on this, but we don’t want to go into this without hearing from the community. But in a public forum, to put it on the table so that everybody understands what the importance is and what the goals are."
That public forum is coming, with a Boston City Council hearing in the works to address the zoning ordinance. Christopher promises to come to the table armed with a data-backed proposal for a change. For her part, D’Alcomo isn’t waiting. She’s taken matters into her own hands in extraordinary fashion, purchasing the building next door.
"I want to encourage long-term renters and so what I want to do is I want to make spacious apartments," she explained. "So as opposed to having six bedrooms, I’m going to go the other direction and go from four bedrooms down to three for the entire building."
And so D’Alcomo is in Brighton to stay, and hopes her tenants will be too.
If there is something in the news that has you curious to know more, let Edgar know. Email him at curiositydesk@wgbh.org. He might just look into it for you.
