PSU-ACLU takes on Borough Council, housing issue

With more than 2,500 petition signatures and a lot of exposure as ammunition, members of the Penn State chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union are getting ready to battle with what they feel is a discriminatory housing ordinance.

The ordinance, if enacted, would limit single family homes students could rent by creating a separate housing designation for students. The second, and last, public hearing on the measure will be held at the municipal building 7:30 p.m. Monday.

The campus organization plans to make the student side of this story heard at that hearing, ACLU member Ann Swinburn said.

"We really want them to listen to us on this issue," she said. "We need a lot of people there."

Their voices will not fall on deaf ears. Council member Jerry Wettstone said members will take many things into consideration before the vote.

Swinburn said the council had better listen; students make up 70 percent of the borough electorate.

"The borough is finally going to have to listen to us," she said. "They won't be able to get away with this anymore."

What they are trying to get away with, she said, is blatant discrimination -- keeping students out of certain neighborhoods.

"An ordinance that singles out a particular part of the population sounds pretty discriminatory to me," she said.

Council member Ruth Lavin said she thinks otherwise.

"I don't think trying to protect our neighborhoods is discrimination," she said.

Many areas in the borough have chronic noise and litter problems that stem from rental housing, she said. Often landlords do not care for a home as a resident owner would, depressing property values.

"I am listening to students. But I have lived in this town for 40 years," Lavin said. "In that time I have seen a lot of changes and I can tell they are not happy or appropriate changes."

Swinburn, who lives in an apartment above the All-American Rathskeller, 108 S. Pugh St., said she sympathizes with those who complain about noisy behavior.

"I know what this town can offer -- all the noise, all the drunkenness," she said. "I have had many sleepless nights."

Those problems, Swinburn said, can be solved by enforcing ordinances the borough already has on the books to deal with drunkenness, noise and building maintenance.

One petition signer, Matt McNees (junior-English), said there is a foolproof way to avoid those problems.

"You head a little out of town and things calm down a bit," he said. "Next year I am moving out there for many of the same reasons."

One of the problems is people have been doing just that. The borough has been losing permanent residents. Residents with jobs, who pay the occupational assessment, are an important source of revenue.

"We really need to preserve our family neighborhoods," Wettstone said. "We need to keep people living here all the time."

But ACLU member Scott Paterno said the revenue can be guaranteed without zoning laws like this one.

"This borough does have legitimate concerns. They do have an eroding tax base," said the Collegian columnist. "This is just not the right way to do it."

Paterno said the group wants to open a dialogue between council and students -- something the ordinance might stifle.

"This will only lead to a greater separation," he said.