Many San Diego residents living near properties rented by college students have become familiar with the sights and sounds associated with what the city has dubbed ‘mini-dorms’: car doors slamming at 3 a.m., drunken profanities being yelled down the street, trashcans left out all week and cars parked on the lawn.
Revelle College junior Angela Wells lives with five other girls in her University City home, and shares a garage that her landlord has converted into a bedroom. Under a San Diego city councilman’s proposal, ‘mini-dorms’ such as hers could be banned.
In response to a rising number of complaints by single-family homeowners around the city, the San Diego City Council is discussing a possible citywide ban on mini-dorms. City Councilman Jim Madaffer said his efforts in recent months to decrease the number of ‘problematic’ rental properties were made to recreate a more idyllic environment for San Diego homeowners.
Though the city’s regulations do not formally recognize ‘mini-dorms,’ the term is typically defined as single-family homes divided up for multiple renters, most of whom are students.
Landlords often add bedrooms for more residents and pave over the front yard to accommodate more cars, creating an issue of overcrowding in neighborhoods with multiple residences of this kind.
In September, Madaffer held a town hall meeting, where many locals voiced their qualms about the mini-dorms’ impact on the city.
‘There is no question this is a quality-of-life issue,’ Madaffer said at the meeting. ‘This has created a party environment that causes a lot of problems.’
Madaffer has since made several proposals, all of which have been analyzed by the College Area Community Council and the Land Use and Housing Commission. Some of the proposals include creating an overlay zone for parking around San Diego State University — where complaints are most frequent — changing the amount of hardspace allowed in the front yard and finding new ways to implement and clarify existing codes where enforcement has been lacking.
Current city law states that up to 70 percent of the front yard can be paved over with concrete, but the aesthetics of a mostly concrete front yard leave many residents upset about the street’s overall appearance. Some residents, who moved into these neighborhoods years ago, said they have angrily watched their locales morph into student-dominated areas.
Pam Hardy, a spokeswoman for City Councilman Scott Peters, also lives in an area near several ‘mini-dorms’ and said she understands why many residents are impacted by the large student population.
‘Some people say that if I can’t see it, it isn’t my problem,’ she said. ‘Some people just don’t like seeing that many students in their neighborhood.’
Most of Madaffer’s plans have focused on the areas around SDSU, but acknowledged that the problem of mini-dorms is not confined to one neighborhood.
‘The particular location with the most problems is in the College Area near SDSU, and there is a growing concern in the neighborhoods of Pacific Beach, La Jolla, Kearny Mesa and the Navajo Community,’ Madaffer stated in a memo to Mayor Jerry Sanders.
While the mini-dorm issue is not as pronounced around UCSD, Peters asked the city council to recognize that since there are several colleges in San Diego, any implemented policies should be enforced citywide.
Peters’ district includes the area around UCSD, and most of the complaints that his office receives are from University City and La Jolla regarding excess noise, trash and cars parked on the street.
Hardy said that the issue has more to do with the fact that the single-family dwellings are turning into apartment-style homes, not the people who are renting them.
‘We don’t want to scapegoat students,’ Hardy said.
Revelle College junior Molica Anderson lives in a University City mini-dorm with five other students.
Under an agreement with her landlord, Anderson shares the garage, which has been converted into a fifth bedroom, with Revelle junior Angela Wells.
Sharing a house with so many other students makes rent more affordable for everyone, Anderson said.
‘Living in the garage is worth the rent,’ she said. ‘I wanted to live with five other girls and this is the only house we could find with a reasonable price.’
Madaffer said he is aware of students’ financial concerns, but the negative impact of these residences has compelled him to act.
‘When you live in a single-family neighborhood, you didn’t bargain for an apartment,’ he said at the meeting.
At that meeting, Madaffer also discussed academic consequences imposed on students due to off-campus misconduct. SDSU policy now dictates that in certain cases, even off-campus infractions can impact a student’s academic record, according to Susan Shuckett, who is in charge of Student Rights and Responsibilities at SDSU.
Policy at UCSD maintains that, in general, a student cannot be held accountable for off-campus noise-related misconduct. On occasion, landlords and neighbors of UCSD students have asked the campus to intervene, and in such cases Student Legal Services has tried to mediate solutions with all parties, according to UCSD Director of Student Policies and Judicial Affairs Anthony Valladolid.
‘This type of complaint could never impact a student’s academic record,’ Valladolid stated in an e-mail.
Although the university cannot hold students accountable for off-campus actions, another neighborhood enforcement group that focuses on the issue of mini-dorms, the College Area Party Plan, can ‘cap’ a home and its occupants for repeated law violations by placing them on probation for a year.
Originally created around SDSU’s College Area in the 1980s, this program is one method of cracking down on problems caused by mini-dorms. Run by the San Diego Police Department, the citywide program allows police to keep track of problematic residences and can lead to the arrest of ‘capped’ tenants who continually violate city ordinances. Madaffer’s proposals are also targeted toward making this program more effective.
In response to the increasing number of residential complaints, city council staff are currently creating ordinance proposals for the next Land Use and Housing Commission meeting. Any new or amended policies will be passed on to the city council, which would vote on and potentially put the new policies into effect in the coming months.
Although Anderson said that her neighbors have complained a few times about noise, she and her roommates try to be as respectful as possible at all times.
If the city were to pass a ban on ‘mini-dorms,’ Anderson said that her landlord would probably force the girls to vacate the house or lower the number of residents.
‘I hope the city doesn’t pass this ban,’ she said. ‘It’s so much work to find a house with school and everything. The ban wouldn’t be healthy for students.’
