COLUMN: Zoning laws discriminate against students
In many college towns, a rivalry arises between the students and the community. Logan is no exception. However, our town has taken it a step further by creating laws to keep college students from living among the other citizens.
Logan city has zoning laws, which categorize sections of the city according to how many people are allowed to live in a house.
Most of the houses outside a two-block radius of the campus are classified as single family residential. This means that no more than three unrelated people can live in a single house. This law discriminates against college students by making it very difficult for them to live in the neighborhoods closest to campus.
I live less than two blocks west of the bottom of Old Main Hill in a “single family residential” zone. The average rent in the area is around $800 a month, which divided three ways comes out to close to $1,100 per semester. This does not include utilities which can be another $100 to $150 a month. This is very expensive for a student at this school.
By adding the word “unrelated” to the law, it serves no other purpose than to discriminate against students because it allows families to have as many children, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers and whoever else that shares a family tree to live in the same house.
This year, on-campus housing was filled, as well as the off-campus apartment complexes in the area. This law is, in effect, limiting the number of students we can even have at the school by leaving them nowhere they can afford to live. Could this even be part of the reason we have such a low-retention rate?
The community needs to realize how important the university and the students are to the city. According to the City Planner’s Office, in 1996 there was a “downzone,” in which several of the areas closest to campus were purposely zoned to allow for fewer students. If there is sufficient parking and space in a house, people should be allowed to use that space. I can understand some families and retired citizens would like a quiet place to live, but if they don’t want college students living next to them, maybe a block away from a university is not the best place to move.