BU Off-Campus Student Digs Being Inspected for Overcrowding
City won't evict until alternative housing found
The city and the University will help relocate students who live in 19 overcrowded addresses identified by Boston inspectors. Photo by Flickr contributor John Macy
The city of Boston says that 19 addresses occupied by 166 BU students may have too many tenants, in violation of Boston law, but that the students won’t face eviction.
Instead, the city will work to help relocate students to alternative housing owned either by their current landlords or the University. “We probably have…200 to 230 empty beds” available, says Marc Robillard, BU’s executive director of housing and dining. “They’re spread out all over the dormitory system. They could be the third bed in a triple or the fourth bed in a quad.”
Those empty beds are just 2 percent of the University’s student housing inventory, but “we would be able to accommodate a student who was out without a place,” Robillard says. “They have to be flexible with us; we may not be able to put them in a single.”
Inspections of the potentially overcrowded addresses, most on Commonwealth Avenue, will likely begin shortly and run through spring, says William Christopher, the city’s inspectional services commissioner. The inspections will confirm whether the residences violate a municipal ordinance that bans more than four undergraduates from sharing an apartment.
The alleged overcrowding hasn’t been confirmed, because it “is just based on data” from schools, Christopher says. “It’s not based on physical inspection.”
“The objective of this is not to displace students,” he says. “Some of the kids walk around terrified that we’re going to throw them out. We’re not going to do that to students.” Inspectors will ask students’ permission to enter the residences. They are permitted to refuse an inspection, but the city can seek a court order to inspect any unit that officials fear has dangerous living conditions.
Any sanctions for overcrowding and other violations would fall on landlords, not students, Christopher emphasizes. But he says even landlords with past problems at their buildings have been cooperating with the city as it seeks to improve its apartment-monitoring system. He points to the experience of last fall’s Move-In week, when his department found an apartment building that had multiple problems, including overcrowding. The landlord had alternative housing that was acceptable to some of the students.
That resolution was “so reassuring,” says Christopher. Similarly, the upcoming inspections “could be a seamless event that follows all the rules and regulations.”
The inspections are part of a crackdown on overcrowded student apartments by the city. Officials suspect that a total of 580 addresses citywide, involving several universities, may exceed the four-tenant cap. The inspections follow the 2013 death of BU student Binland Lee (CAS’13), who died in a fire in an Allston apartment with multiple violations, including overcrowding. A subsequent Boston Globe exposé found gaps in the city’s apartment-monitoring system.
The University and the city have published safety advisories to guide student renters who live off-campus. Meanwhile, BU officials say, the inspections are a wake-up call to students planning to live off-campus next year.
“Despite what some realtors or property owners may say, this ordinance is something the city will be enforcing,” says Michelle Consalvo, assistant vice president for government and community affairs.
Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore (SED’87) urges students in any affected residences to contact his office, 617-353-4126 or dos@bu.edu. With available beds on campus, he says, “we could help here with any temporary circumstances a student finds himself in.”
Boston law mandates that colleges provide the city with a list of the addresses of all students living off campus each semester (the Globe reported that more than 45,000 undergraduates and graduates live off-campus in the city). Landlords must register their rental properties each year with the city, which is supposed to inspect them every five years.
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