York City Council has imposed a threshold limiting the number of student houses in areas close to the University today.
The long-awaited ‘Article 4 Direction’ legislation will be enforced from today, and states that the threshold for Houses of Multiple Occupancy (HMOs) will be “20% of all properties across a neighbourhood and 10% at street level.” HMOs are homes in which three or more unrelated people live, and in York the vast majority of these are student lets.
Any applications to create new student lets on streets such as Heslington Road, Hull Road and Wellington street, or in the Badger Hill neighbourhood will now be immediately rejected. Furthermore houses that are considered in disrepair following council review will have to reapply for HMO status, and, if the street or neighbourhood is already above the threshold then this is likely to be refused.
This legislation has been strongly opposed by the University of York and YUSU, who see it as clearly targeting and being to the detriment of students.
Speaking to Vision, a representative for the University of York said, “The overwhelming majority of students are responsible neighbours and they contribute substantially to the communities in which they live.
“We did not support the Article 4 Direction. While we shall continue to expand our campus-based accommodation, we understand that many of our students wish to experience living in the city. We shall work with City of York Council to try to ensure that students’ choice of where they wish to live is not unduly restricted.”
The legislation comes in the wake of what the council call an ‘in-depth’ consultation process. In a report issued by the council’s integrated strategy unit the reasons given for restricting HMOs include “increased levels of crime and the fear of crime”, “littering”, “noise” and “increased parking pressures”. However, in a questionnaire issued during the consultation only 24% of respondents agreed with the proposed thresholds.
Second-year Maths student Dan Hirst questioned the wisdom of limiting neighbourhoods to 20% HMOs. “It seems silly, surely locals would rather have ‘student areas’ where lots of students were and not many other people rather than spreading them out everywhere?”
“increased levels of crime and the fear of crime”, “littering”, “noise” and “increased parking pressures”
Some absurdaties there. Students are statistically the victims of crime, and parking pressures? I know barely any sudents who own cars, I know a lot of adults who do.
Littering and noise? Probably fair enough.
A Nouse study last year found that student areas in general were average when it comes to the issues described. Something like 10% more crime but 10% less littering. They were wholly unremarkable except in their mundanity…
Pretty sure most of the litter and noise on my road comes from the neighbours… Although I do live in Tang Hall…
But seriously, house prices in Tang Hall are going up because a lot of properties are being transformed into student housing, likely to be displacing those who cause trouble.
This is such a ridiculous rule, why punish students just for being students. Also why punish Landlords who have properties near campus ad will lose money if they are unable to rent to students. It is a completely stupid thing to argue that students litter more and make more noise, then is the next rule that there can only be a certain number of families with children on each road, as they to make noise and produce litter? Its once again students been victimised for doing nothing wrong, do York city council realise that we have to live somewhere? Why should a family get the option of living where they please but students are limited? It just is not fair at all.
I think Oliver Blackburn made a good point about parking pressures. Having to contend with living on a tight budget, the vast majority of students end up living without a car until they graduate. To use this as a reason to place limitations on the amount of HMOs in an area seems more than a little unreasonable.