December 8, 2003

The News & Observer

For decades, University Park residents have worked to maintain a vibrant neighborhood balance. On one hand, as a neighbor to N.C. State University, we appreciate the energy and diversity the university attracts, including varied lifestyles and a range of affordable housing options. At the same time, we strive to ensure that this area will continue to be a safe and healthy place for people to live, whether they are working toward college degrees, raising families, enjoying retirement or just being part of a supportive community where folks respect each other's rights. 

Unfortunately, there are a growing number of absentee rental operators for whom this vision of community responsibility and accountability is irrelevant. As a result, neighbors are suffering under an increasing burden of chronic abuses: rundown property, housing violations, illegal rooming house additions and conversions, late-night disturbances, piles of trash and junk, yards turned into parking lots and a basic disrespect for the rights and property of others. 

We could learn a lot from typical apartment complex management, where tenant rules are strictly enforced and individual violators are not allowed to jeopardize the larger economic investment in the surrounding rental community. Contrast this attitude with our single-family neighborhood setting where absentee rental operators have little or no interest in the economic drain their property violations have on the surrounding investments of others. Adding insult to injury, these absentee operators benefit from the surrounding homeowner investments to bolster their rental rates. 

What is needed is effective and accountable management so that absentee rentals can become responsible and constructive elements of the neighborhood fabric. The University Park Homeowners Association (UPHA) Board of Directors, including several members who own rental properties in our neighborhood, support the measures proposed by the city-sponsored Neighborhood Preservation and Housing Task Force, including: 

* Licensing small-scale rental properties in neighborhoods 

* Establishing a housing violation scoring system to track and enforce regulations, funded by the licensing fees 

* Applying neighborhood conservation overlay districts to limit the density of rental properties in neighborhoods (Current regulations already limit the density of rooming houses.) 

* "Sunsetting" nonconforming chronic nuisance properties in neighborhoods 

Based on local experience, the neighborhood association board recommends licensing of up to five-unit rental properties. There has also been discussion of adding a neighborhood conservation overlay district provision permitting "granny flats" -- small accessory dwelling units -- on single-family lots, so long as the property owner resides on the property. This provision could have a number of benefits, including adding affordable rental housing with effective landlord accountability and encouraging home ownership by providing supplemental income to help pay the mortgage. 

The Triangle Apartment Association has suggested that the housing task force report is biased toward eliminating all rental housing in neighborhoods. One could hardly reach this conclusion after reading the report's No. 1 conclusion, which says Raleigh should "encourage growth toward a mix of household types in every neighborhood, and every cluster, so that one-person households, couples, families with children and group households are side by side." 

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It is time to acknowledge two things: First, unlike apartment complex managers, absentee rental operators in neighborhoods have little or no interest in the damage that rental housing abuses do to surrounding property values, especially in the absence of regulatory oversight. Second, rental dwelling operations within neighborhoods are for-profit businesses, and should be licensed in order to overcome the chronic and widespread history of regulatory abuse, to protect surrounding property values and to help Raleigh neighborhoods like University Park continue to be safe, respectful, diverse and neighborly places for people to live, whether they own or rent. 

(Russ Stephenson is a member of the University Park Homeowners Association board.)