There are ten houses on Minerva, fourteen if you count corner houses facing other streets. Just one block long, it runs between S. Forest, where there are mainly student rentals, and Olivia, whose houses are mostly family owned. Minerva’s homes, too, are mostly owner occupied—but every time one goes up for sale, some residents worry they’ll be overrun by noisy students. Currently, two houses are rented, and a third has been empty since students left last May and is for sale or rent.
This past summer, homeowners Owen Jansson and Tony Pinnell began complaining to the city about landlords who don’t comply with city codes. While rental properties must be registered with the city’s housing bureau and inspected every thirty months, the two on Minerva were not registered and therefore not inspected. “If they [the landlords] think they can just shit on our doorstep in any way that abuses the law or code, I am all for kicking butt—but in a straight-ahead, proper, legal manner,” Pinnell emails. He reported the landlords to the city, which required them to register and undergo inspections.
Bob Rubin, owner of one of the previously unregistered houses, isn’t concerned—he says he’s taken good care of the property and is sure he’ll be certified. But he feels the system doesn’t work—landlords pay multiple fees homeowners do not, he points out, and then pass the increased costs on to tenants. “I rent to professors or graduate students,” says Rubin. “I hate noise myself.” He’s not pleased that some landlords let their properties run down. He’s also not pleased with the actions of homeowners on “the lovely block” of Minerva. “My tenant, an MBA student, says there’s a neighbor who’s stalking them and yells at them if they just go outside.”
Some homeowners suspect landlords encourage their tenants to exceed the city’s occupancy limits by advertising “study rooms” that the renters use as additional bedrooms. But since occupancy is hard to prove, they are looking at parking lot laws instead; if an area is used to park five cars or more, it is by code a lot and must be paved and lit. “We are getting a very positive response from the city,” says Pinnell, who also calls on the police frequently to quiet late-night parties and enforce trash regulations at nearby houses on S. Forest.
The rental-conversion trend may have escalated almost accidentally. Because so many U-M students come from affluent families, some parents buy homes for their children instead of paying for dorm rooms or apartments. Now that they can’t sell them for what they paid, some turn these properties into rental houses after their children graduate.
The problem may de-escalate almost accidentally, too: with all the high-rise apartments going up close to campus, there should be less incentive for students to move to distant streets like Minerva.
