A measure that would more tightly limit the growth of student housing in several State College neighborhoods has gained steam this month.
The borough’s Student Home Rule, in place nearly 15 years, already controls how many college-student homes can be established in neighborhoods zoned as R1 and R2. Those include College Heights, the Highlands, Holmes-Foster and Greentree — areas traditionally oriented toward single-family houses.
Right now, nearly 300 student-home houses are registered in the borough, according to a Centre Daily Times report. Under the Student Home Rule — which requires that student homes be at least three 75-foot lot widths apart in R1 and R2 zones — the borough could accommodate roughly 36 more student homes in those traditionally single-family neighborhoods.
At least two single-family houses in the borough are converted into student homes each year, State College planner Anne Messner said. (Generally speaking, the borough classifies as student homes those houses that host at least two college students apiece.)
That single-family-to-student-housing trend has worried a variety of borough officials — and for a variety of reasons. Some neighborhood advocates have aired concern over property values, the loss of more permanent residents, and changes in neighborhood atmosphere.
Fiscal watchdogs have lamented the stagnation in the borough’s earned-income-tax base — a tax base driven largely by residents in their prime earning years, not so much by college students.
With those concerns in mind, the borough Planning Commission voted 6-0 last week to advance a measure that would triple the required minimum distance among student homes in R1 and R2 zones. Only commission member Michael Roeckel was absent.
The measure, now being drafted formally by the borough staff, would effectively cut to eight the number of additional student homes that could be created in the R1 and R2 zones.
Once the Planning Commission formalizes the proposal’s language, it will go before the full Borough Council for consideration. (The commission serves the council in an advisory capacity.)
‘There’s the right of the property owner (to convert a house to student housing), but there’s also rights — or feelings — of the community,’ commission Chairman Evan Myers said. ‘You have to weigh both and decide which you think is the greater good.’
Ron Madrid, another Planning Commission member, said the matter pivots centrally on neighborhood stability and the borough’s fiscal health.
‘I personally (would not) have a problem saying, ‘No more student housing” anywhere in R1 and R2 zones, Madrid said.
But politically, he said, ‘I just don’t think we could sell’ a proposal that strict.
Commission member Charles Gable said a tightening of R1 and R2 student housing should be accompanied by more borough flexibility in accommodating new student-housing development in the downtown.
‘We always seem to try to put brakes on those types of developments — for very good reasons,’ Gable said. ‘At the same time, now we’re talking about doing the same thing in the neighborhoods.’
The borough hasn’t really developed a comprehensive approach to the overall question of how to accommodate the robust and perpetual need for student housing, Gable has said. Penn State’s student population at the University Park campus has climbed slowly but steadily over the past several decades — and now tops 40,000.
The Planning Commission is scheduled to meet again at 7 p.m. Thursday in the municipal building, 243 S. Allen St.
