Golden Rule
We missed this story in the Daily from last week about the Burns Park zoning changes, and having read it, we still feel like we’re missing a lot of the story. For instance, a business school student says “he thinks people are concerned about property values, not the neighborhood itself. ‘It’s really an issue for the investors,’ he said.” Which “people” are concerned about property values? The landlords or the single-family house owners? We are also told that someone named “Berggren” thinks that “the area already has about as much density as it can stand,” although we are never given her first name or any other identifying information.
Why are the non-student residents of the area proposing such a change? “Maybe it’s the beer cans on their lawns. Or the loud noise late at night. Maybe it’s the lack of community that occurs when your neighbors leave every year or two.” Maybe the Old West Side Association newsletter has infiltrated the Daily. Anti-renter language is in full effect here; “homes” are in danger of being “converted into student rentals,” which might cause “student encroachment.” If the area is zoned for multiple-family, then why aren’t the single-family houses “encroaching”?
Perhaps the best quote in the article: “Susan Johnson-Jaworski, who lives on Golden Avenue with her husband and their three children under the age of seven, said she doesn’t want the neighborhood to be overdeveloped…’[I]f we multiplied the number of people in the neighborhood, it would change the atmosphere.’” (Emphasis ours.)
Like, if there were a sudden increase in the number of households with five people living under the same roof, that might really cause some problems with overpopulation.
Those five people don’t have five cars, and I’m guessing her children don’t play beerpong and litter cups all over. You are being purposefully obtuse. Have you been on Golden? Have you seen how small the lots are? Most have driveways are long enough for one car only, and the lots have room for one more car in front of the house. Assuming the Johnson-Jaworski’s have two cars, they have enough room to park them both. Suppose four unrelated people with three cars between them lived in their house (because most houses on Golden don’t have four bedrooms we’ll can’t push it all the way to six realistically) — where would the third car go?
Quibbling about Golden is just silly, like the current zoning — that was probably pushed through by whomever tore down two houses and put up the ugly little cashbox apartment building on the street — is silly.
posted by Clem on January 16th, 2008 at 11:33 amThey can park cars on the street. They can also go without cars, as is much more feasible if they can live as close to campus as Golden Street is than if they have to live further away.
Her children will eventually be in high school. Many non-student residents like to complain about how their high-school-age children have no place to park their cars. Her children will also probably go to college and live somewhere near a college campus, although not necessarily this one. And currently, they probably produce a fair amount of noise.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 16th, 2008 at 11:39 amThere’s not enough room on the street for every house to have multiple cars, and you must be dreaming if you think more than 25% of undergrads at UM don’t have cars. Also, little kids make little kid amounts of noise and mess, at limited hours and in limited locations.
I’ve been young and living in a neighborhood, and while my roommates and I were far better than many, there is no way in which we were more space-efficient or quieter than a young family.
I am sympathetic to your cause in general, but I don’t think Golden is the hill you want to die on in your advocacy of density or student housing. Undergrads won’t consider it close to campus, anyway. Anything off the first block of Granger from State is pushing it.
posted by Clem on January 16th, 2008 at 11:49 amA family of five may be more efficient than five adult roommates, but is it so much more efficient that they can throw stones from their single-family glass house? Is it more efficient than a household of three or four adult roommates? Does the fact that the roommates can’t write each other off on their tax returns mitigate any of this?
I don’t know what the exact economics are, but I would think that someone who has a relatively big family should be fairly tolerant about population density.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on January 16th, 2008 at 11:57 amRegarding the Daily: Stockholm Syndrome?
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on January 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pmI have always loved Thurgood Marshall’s dissent in the Supreme Court case Belle Terre v. Boraas, about anti-student zoning in a small NY village near SUNY-Stonybrook.
posted by Dale on January 16th, 2008 at 1:05 pmI believe zoning laws for businesses require a certain number of spaces in the parking lot based on the store size. Maybe part of the solution would be to tie the number of bedrooms in houses with a required number of parking spaces. Any new construction or further dividing of existing homes to increase the number of bedrooms would require enough off street parking. This would to somewhat limit density, but I don’t think it would be that large of a burden.
posted by Andy on January 16th, 2008 at 1:52 pmEven at UM, a lot of students who live in rentals do NOT have cars.
I don’t think parking is the reason for the re-zoning.
posted by Brian on January 16th, 2008 at 8:15 pmUtter waste of time asking people where new construction or housing ’shouldn’t’ occur.
Not here? What a shocking and helpful response.
posted by todd on January 16th, 2008 at 8:37 pmI’m guessing her children don’t play beerpong and litter cups all over.
Well, it sounds like someone had a pretty boring childhood!
posted by Constantine on January 16th, 2008 at 10:07 pmI think we should restrict the number of cars per house. Yup. Good idea. That way when this family wants to get a third (or fourth?) car when these little kids are driving, they won’t be able to.
I live in a neighborhood where the little kids are suddenly grown up and I can tell you that HS kids are a nuisance. They drive too fast, take up too many parking spots, they litter and they play their radios really loud. I think we should consider some kind of zoning restricting my neighborhood to families with children under the age of 14.
posted by Just a homeowner on January 17th, 2008 at 12:25 pmI wasn’t suggesting restricting the number of cars, I am suggesting quite the opposite. That houses have enough space to park cars.
Brian you may be right that parking isn’t the reason for the re-zoning, however it is a concern for a neighborhood when single family homes get split up into apartments suddenly there often is the need for more parking than exists off the street.
posted by Andy on January 17th, 2008 at 1:54 pmIt will be interesting to see what impact all the mega structures Ann Arbor and UofM are building that will increase student rental units will have on the rental market locally. With a huge increase in the supply of student rental housing on/near campus in the next few years, I would think the issue of student encroachment in townie/nimby neighborhoods will become somewhat muted if not entirely moot.
posted by Chuck L. on January 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pmMargaritaville is the new Ann Arbor
posted by Doghouse on January 19th, 2008 at 11:19 amhttp://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/1/18hutchinson.html
I live on Golden. I’ve almost never had a problem with my renter neighbors. In fact, we share our driveway with a rental duplex, and get along well with our neighbors. I like the diversity of the neighborhood. I don’t want to drive out renters. But I do also value the character of the neighborhood, which has changed very little in the 20 years I’ve lived there. It is a stable neighborhood. Many of us have lived here for 5, 10, 20 years or longer.
The change to “R1″ zoning from the anomalous “R4″ zoning won’t make renting impossible, and it won’t eliminate any of the existing rentals. It does reduce the number of “unrelated” adults to which a single dwelling can be rented from 6 to 4. Most of the houses on this street don’t have more than 4 bedrooms. It would prevent someone from somehow buying several adjacent houses, tearing them down, and building an apartment building.
Interestingly, the one house that was recently converted to a 6-bedroom rental has not been fully rented, and the landlord is apparently desperate, because a huge sign recently appeared on the front of the house. A sign that is in violation of city ordinances because it is so big. There are two houses a block away that have been unrented for the entire school year. I think landlords are fooling themselves that students will live that far from campus. Maybe the problem will fix itself. And maybe it won’t.
Finally, the issue for me is not so much NIMBY as NIMFY. I walk from home to my job in downtown Ann Arbor. Many of the rentals that I pass are, to put it bluntly, trashy and trashed. I welcome neighbors of any sort who will not let rotten newspapers pile up in their front yard, not leave the yard strewn with plastic cups, etc. I welcome neighbors who will show a little care and respect for the place in which they live.
posted by goldenresident on February 5th, 2008 at 3:24 pm