Burns Park Battle
The News leads off with quotes from both sides of the debate in their story on the Lower Burns Park rezoning issue — house owners, who don’t want to live near those icky renters (as ably represented by Mayor Hieftje), and landlords, who worry that the value of their investments may decline if they can’t rent to the icky renters any more. But we can’t help feeling like there’s some group that’s not being represented in the coverage. Maybe it’s the commuters who will have to drive through the neighborhood, or the map makers who will have to redraw their boundaries if the area’s zoning is changed to single family. Hmm, we’re sure it will come to us eventually.
Could it be the icky renters themselves?
posted by Greg on December 27th, 2007 at 8:28 amYes, it is about the icky renters as opposed to renters who show some respect for themselves, their surroundings and their neighbors.
Rental property decorated with red and blue cups, plywood tables on the lawn, broken bicycles and cars, blue NYTimes bags, and trash piled next to the house and not taken to the street on pick up day Those things are just as bad in a single family neighborhood. But you must ask yourself why those things that take a neighborhood down are more common in rental neighborhoods than in single family neighborhoods?
It seems that most of the whining about poorly kept rental property is directed at landlords. Icky renters are just as responsible, if not more so, for keeping their residence clean and orderly. And that’s the biggest complaint. Let’s face it, why do the student ghetto neighborhoods look that way? Never blame the renters! They’re just poor students! (who lack respect for themselves or other peoples property) It’s not all the landlords fault. Why would anyone continue to pump $$ into a rental property when it gets trashed every year? Why bother when the entire neighborhood looks like a shithole? It’s like a cancer.
Let’s not blame the icky renters, let’s blame their parents! the landlords, the City!
posted by mucho gusto on December 27th, 2007 at 10:09 amAnd here, George, we have what Ann Arbor would look like without the University of Michigan…
posted by HNG on December 27th, 2007 at 11:14 amDid I say anything about the glorious U of M? The shining beacon of Ann Arbor?
What does the U of M have to do with icky renters who are slobs except to give some people an excuse (oh, they’re just poor students) to enable their self destructive and neighborhood destructive bad habits?
What I hear George saying is because the U of M gives, means, and does so much for Ann Arbor, that we should excuse poor housekeeping by icky renters.
posted by mucho gusto on December 27th, 2007 at 11:41 amIcky renters are just as responsible, if not more so, for keeping their residence clean and orderly.
Amen, brother. Nobody likes icky renters, especially non-icky renters. (Most especially those non-icky renters who end up with icky renters as housemates or building mates or neighbors.) I’ve certainly seen a fair number of renters who need to be whacked with a rolled-up newspaper and have their noses pushed into the corners of their showers (or living rooms, for that matter) and taught how to take care of themselves.
But there are several poor assumptions involved here. One is that some renters are icky, and therefore all renters are icky. Another is that all non-renters are not-icky. Both “renters” and “non-renters” are sets that include members who are “icky” and members who are “non-icky” (Tragically, the comment field does not allow me to draw in a Venn diagram.)
And, finally, there’s the assumption that the best way to deal with plastic cups on the lawn is to burn the house down - or, more accurately, that the best way to deal with the externally visible effects of icky renters is to squelch the possibility of having renters at all. Of course, on the other hand, the proposed rezoning doesn’t even remove the possibility of renters - it just reduces the potential number of them, which doesn’t at all preclude having icky ones, particularly in units that already exist. Why not deal with the negative effects themselves rather than taking measures which are both overly dramatic on the one hand and ineffective (or, at best, indirectly effective) on the other? Doesn’t the City already have tools for regulating on-street parking, littered front laws, noise at night, etc? If those are the things people are concerned about, why not use those regulations, rather than going off on a tangent with the zoning?
Really, I don’t find this necessarily to be about the renters, so much as about the appropriate level of governmental regulation for the problem at hand. Interventions that are targeted at the specific problem, quickly and directly addressing the offense, are better for everybody involved than sweeping measures which are expected to possibly reduce the problem indirectly 20 years from now. If you lived in the neighborhood in question and had icky renters living next door, would you want to be told, “Yes, we’ll come right now and write a noise violation and a litter citation,” or, “Yes, we’ll rezone the property so that, in a decade or two, there will be fewer icky renters in the house”?
(I’ll also note that I lived right in that neighborhood (two doors off of the street in that article) for about a year and a half. Yes, as a renter, just two doors off the street mentioned in the article. Personally, I think the rezoning in question is pretty unnecessary - most of the houses and lots in that neighborhood are small enough that it would be very very difficult to max out the number of units/occupants allowed by the zoning. I’d like to see a build-out analysis to know just how much of an effect the change in zoning would have - but, in the same vein, I don’t think the downzoning would have a dramatic negative effect.)
posted by Murph on December 27th, 2007 at 1:49 pmMurph brings up a good point. There are people in Ann Arbor who inherit their homes and then piss out the back door — as in through the back door — until the screens rust away.
posted by A Different Jon on December 28th, 2007 at 6:58 amBy the way, what’s being built between Red Hots and the place formerly known as Taco Bell (currently ‘Zas?)?
posted by A Different Jon on December 28th, 2007 at 7:18 amI don’t care if people piss through their back door screens, just replace them when then rust out.
A nuclear reactor with 10 levels of parking and a mini mall. Actually, it’s an ugly, high rent, mondo concreto filled with icky renters. The old building that was there had a lot of icky renters. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Read the papers Diff Jon. Try to keep up with the rest of us. Be aware of your surroundings. If it was a snake, it would have bit you.
posted by mucho gusto on December 28th, 2007 at 9:57 amRed Hots on South U? That would be Zaragon Place - an apartment house rental.
posted by from a REAL oldie on December 28th, 2007 at 11:09 amEverybody has a different idea of what an “icky renter” is. I moved out of Ann Arbor and into a place where if you don’t cut your grass at least once a week you’re considered an “icky home owner”.
posted by Greg on December 28th, 2007 at 1:09 pm