A Minnesota Daily housing survey reports that 40% of properties surrounding the University of Minnesota campus are “over-occupied.” The residents, who are overwhelmingly students, have been violating a city ordinance regulating the number of occupants an apartment can have in order to reduce the cost of rent.
 
When the city of Minneapolis came knocking, Taryn and her six roommates (students at UMN) followed their landlord’s directions carefully: don’t let them in.
 
Taryn and her roommates’ home in the Southeast Como neighborhood has six bedrooms, but the city only allows for three unrelated people to reside there.
 
When city officials made an appointment to inspect their apartment, the landlord hid half the residents’ furniture and belongings in a moving truck.  Once clear of the over-occupancy inspection, the three other residents moved back in.
 
In a survey of 77 houses in Southeast Como, 31 were over-occupied.  In another student heavy neighborhood, Marcy-Holmes, nine of the 22 houses were over-occupied. The city has zoned these homes for just three occupants, even though the Minneapolis property information database states that most of them have more than three bedrooms.
 
Neal, another student, occupies one such home in Marcy-Holmes. If Neal and his roommates abided by the three occupant city limit, rent and utilities would have amounted to over $700 per person each month. Neal said that with that kind of rent, they wouldn’t have signed the lease.
 
Tim Harmsen, owner of Dinkytown Rentals, sympathizes with the students.
 
“If you’re a college student and you’ve got five bedrooms in a house, it’s unrealistic for those bedrooms not to be occupied,” he says.
 
Many landlords share Harmsen’s sentiment. Of 31 over-occupied homes in Southeast Como, landlords knew that more than 84% were over-occupied.
 
Robert Clarksen, a city planner in the Minneapolis Zoning Administration and Enforcement department says that he and his colleagues are aware of high rates of over-occupancy near the university.
 
Still, the City of Minneapolis Housing Inspections Services reports that only 50 cases of unlawful occupancy have been filed since Jan. 2000.
 
Clarkson adds that until the mid-1980s, much of Marcy-Holmes allowed for high-density housing for students.
 
However, the neighborhood’s long-term residents found the high-density homes to be undesirable. They pressured the city into changing the zoning laws and pushing the high-density student housing to the outskirts of the city.
 
“There’s an interesting dichotomy that goes in [the University] area that doesn’t happen elsewhere in the city, with the temporary nature of the students contrasted with the long-term property owners that are there,” Clarksen said.
 
Various neighborhood organizations, such as the Marcy Holmes Neighborhood Association (MHNA) and the Southeast Como Improvement Association (SECIA) argue that allowing more residents per house can create parking, waste and safety problems.
 
City Council member Diane Hofste (who represents Marcy-Holmes) argues that the current zoning laws are not unjust.
 
“It’s not directed at students,” she said. “It’s directed at making a safe environment for people and actually intended to limit some of the abuses of cramming many people into a household.”
 
Though students represent roughly 80% of the renters in these communities, they are largely absent at the polls. In 2009, student voter turnout was below 10% in the City Council election.
 
“If you don’t vote, leadership doesn’t recognize you as a constituent,” says Wells, executive director UNIA.
 
Wells and Harmsen agree that landlords, long-term residents, and students must come together and compromise.
 
However, SECIA neighborhood coordinator James De Sota says that long-term residents of Southeast Como are resistant to any discussion.
 
“I don’t know if anyone would really want to come to the table and look at any kind of compromise,” says De Sota.

More from the Minnesota Daily at the University of Minnesota