Raucous student housing has plagued a Chesco neighborhood. A new measure will hold landlords responsible.
Mount Pleasant residents have complained about student housing for years. A new ordinance will give officials more power to address violations.
A new ordinance seeks to give Tredyffrin officials more power to address unruly student tenants, after quality-of-life issues have plagued a Chester County neighborhood for years.
In a unanimous vote Monday, the municipality’s seven elected officials voted to approve a new ordinance regarding student housing that changes the enforcement mechanism, allowing them to go after the landlords who rent to students — rather than the students themselves.
“I hope this makes a difference, and I hope that we can hold the landlords or the companies, whoever own the property, responsible for this,” said board member Carlotta Johnston-Pugh.
The updated ordinance comes as neighbors — young families, lifelong residents, and aging seniors — on Mount Pleasant Avenue have struggled for years to live alongside a rotating cohort of Villanova University students.
Residents have said previously that they have walked out in the morning to find vomit on their cars, beer cans strewn across the streets and yards, and students passed out on the porch. They’ve been kept up by loud parties, rideshare cars speeding down the street, or a lost drunk student trying to kick in the door.
With Villanova’s new 112-acre Cabrini campus off Upper Gulph Road, putting it now within walking distance to the houses and the parties, residents worry that the problems could intensify.
At least seven houses are rented to students, several along Mount Pleasant, and a few on nearby Henry Avenue, township officials said previously. Another house where students live isn’t zoned properly, which the township has been trying to address, officials said previously.
Board member Hans van Mol said it bothered him, when he first joined the board less than a year ago, that the Mount Pleasant community felt that the township wasn’t responding to their concerns.
“Our ordinance wasn’t suited to keep up with the issues that were going on that needed to be remedied,” he said. “I’m very glad that we finally got to this point here, if not even just for the potential that the township can actually promote a safer, stronger community, but that people can actually feel we’re working on it.”
Tredyffrin first adopted a student housing ordinance more than a decade ago in response to concerns. The measure limited household occupancy to three students and prohibited the houses from being too close together, though the properties along Mount Pleasant were grandfathered in. But its power was somewhat limited.
The new ordinance — a much more robust measure — notes that the owner of the student house will be “directly responsible” for the behavior of student tenants and their guests. It gives the township the ability to inspect the home, if there are suspicions that there are more than three students living in the house. It allows the township to direct the landlord to evict students if three violations occur within the same year. Landlords can be fined up to $1,000 for violations of the ordinance.
Residents should keep calling the police when issues arise, “so that they can properly document it to be used against the landlord enforcement of this ordinance,” said board vice chair Sharon Humble.
For some of the residents, it was a promising effort.
“Yes, I have been one of those that have come and … voiced my concern about what has been going on,” said Mount Pleasant resident Shawn Jackson. “I read through the ordinance, and it’s very comprehensive, and I’m very happy about that.”
Kevin Stroman, a longtime resident of the neighborhood who now runs a mentoring program at the historic Carr School/Mount Pleasant Chapel across the street from one of the student houses, has long tried to offset negative relationships with the students and the residents.
“I think the climate in Mount Pleasant is so bad right now because of certain students getting out of control,” he said. “I like the idea [of the ordinance] because no doubt the owners have to have something that will make them look at who they rent to.”
Others wished it went further. G. Hayward Simpson, a Mount Pleasant resident who lives in the Montgomery County portion, said that the students “have no need, want, will to be part of any community.” He wanted to see student housing entirely excluded from the neighborhood.
“I’m not saying this with any kind of malice, or I don’t want these kids to have a good time. I just don’t want them to live on the block. I want to see single families,” he said.
Jeff Hilliard, a landlord with a student rental on Mount Pleasant, said he “lay[s] down the law” with his tenants.
When he first purchased the house for rentals, Hilliard said he gave his number to the neighbors so they could call him if they ever had a problem with the students. They’ve never contacted him, he said, but he knows the police have been called and “literally driven away because there was no issue whatsoever.”
“So unfortunately, I think it’s just a couple bad tenants and a couple bad landlords that are causing this for these nice people of Mount Pleasant,” he said.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
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