Local residents sparred with landlords Thursday night at the public hearing for a controversial zoning amendment aimed at solving parking problems near the Syracuse University campus.

The amendment would require new rental properties in the area east of campus to have one parking space for each bedroom, but sets a city-wide limit of no more than three spaces for a single-family house.

It is currently before the Common Council’s finance, taxation and assessment committee, and is set to go to vote Oct. 9.

The consequence of the proposal is that it lowers the number of people who can live in a house in the university area. It only applies to property changing from owner-occupied to rented units, but some veteran landlords could be affected if they do not have the proper paperwork filed.

Residents generally spoke in favor of the measure, saying they need to protect their neighborhood from turning over completely to landlords. Landlords opposed to the restrictions argued for a free housing market.

Student Association President Ryan Kelly supported limiting the number of cars in the area, but said he disagrees with the clause that forces university-area landlords to provide an equal number of parking spaces as bedrooms.

‘There could have been a limit of the cars without counting the bedrooms,’ Kelly said, ‘because that’s limiting the number of students, and that’s not what we’re talking about.’

Kelly was the only student to speak at the hearing. Almost all of the 60 in the audience were residents of the east neighborhood or local landlords.

City Zoning Administrator Charles Ladd said the proposal would not affect rented homes that are sold from one landlord to another, unless the new owner plans to make changes to the home, such as adding a bedroom.

Instead, the proposal aims to keep absentee landlords from buying homes that are currently owner-occupied. ‘This is not to change anything,’ Ladd said in an interview after the meeting. ‘It’s to offer a sense of stability.’

Ladd said of the roughly 2,000 units in the neighborhood, 1,050 will be affected because they are owner-occupied (and could potentially be sold to a landlord).

‘What it would do is protect those properties that are owner-occupied that would possibly become absentee,’ Ladd said.

Local landlord Joseph Tupper said there should be a free housing market and landlords should be free to buy whatever properties they like.

‘Market forces have played out over this time period,’ Tupper said. ‘The market does what it does, and this is what’s happened.’

Disagreeing, Committee Chairwoman Stephanie Miner, an at-large Democrat, said, ‘the history of U.S. jurisprudence is controlling the whims of the free market.’

She added that the purpose of the amendment is to encourage single families to move to the neighborhood because they give more to the community and take less in services than tenants.

Council member Thomas Seals, D-fourth district, who represents the university area, was present at the hearing but did not speak.

Harry Lewis and Mike Stanton spoke on behalf of the South East University Neighborhood Association (SEUNA), a group of local residents that petitioned the council earlier this year to limit the number of unrelated tenants living in an apartment from five to three. The petition stalled after a public hearing in March.

‘It behooves us, everybody, and landlords, too, to protect this and keep this as an integrated area,’ said Lewis, the group’s treasurer.

SEUNA President Stanton cited photographs of neighborhood parking violations the association sends to council members on a regular basis.

‘When students return in the fall, it’s like a plague of vehicles – locusts – descend on the campus,’ Stanton said.

Vincent Tinto, of 835 Livingston Ave., spoke in favor of the amendment and submitted a petition that he said had signatures of 20 neighbors who agreed. Livingston’s 800 block is known for its concentration of families.

But some local residents, interested mainly in being able to eventually sell their homes for profit, spoke against the proposed amendment.

Barbara Humphrey, of 834 Westcott St., said it’s unfair to include her neighborhood in a proposal aimed at solving a problem caused primarily by SU students.

She also agreed with Kelly, saying, ‘Somehow it seems to me that matching bedrooms to parking spaces is like matching apples to oranges.’

The two-part amendment, proposed by the zoning department, limits single-family houses across the city to 918-square-feet of off-street parking space. Maximum driveway size is currently based on a percentage that varies from 30 to 40 percent.

The new number translates to roughly three parking spaces, with space in front of each one to pull out, according to zoning department figures. The number increases proportionally for two-family houses.

The second part of the amendment targets the Special Neighborhood District, which includes the area south of East Genesee St., north of Colvin St., east of Comstock Ave. and west of Westmoreland Ave.

It says that for a new landlord to receive a Certificate of Suitability, which allows for tenants, a parking space must be provided for each bedroom. Because the size of on-site parking is limited to three spaces by the first part of the proposal, the amendment would effectively limit the number of people who can live in a single-family house to three.

The amendment can be limited to the district because a 1991 survey established the area as its own entity, Ladd said.

Published on September 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm