Bethlehem dusts off old rental ordinance to target college drinking
By Nicole Radzievich, Contact Reporter
September 15, 2017
BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania – After back-to-back weekends of wild college parties near Lehigh University, Bethlehem is dusting off a 17-year-old ordinance that could lead to the eviction of problem tenants to avert alcohol-fueled tragedies that have befallen other college towns.
A provision of the regulated rental ordinance calls for landlords to be notified when tenants are disruptive — having loud parties, drinking underage or fighting.
If a tenant racks up three violations, the city could force landlords to evict the tenant. The ordinance doesn’t target college students specifically, but does apply to any regulated rental unit where three to five unrelated people live. That is the type of arrangement many landlords have with college students living off campus.
City officials say the citations issued the last two weekends are being reviewed and landlords who have disruptive tenants will be notified.
Police Chief Mark DiLuzio, who cannot recall the city ever forcing an eviction under the ordinance, said the intention isn’t to evict, but to change bad behavior and excessive drinking.
“We’re putting landlords on notice: if you’re renting to these kids and taking their money, you are going to be responsible landlords,” DiLuzio said.
Last weekend, police arrested 20 Lehigh students for alleged underage drinking, and five were hospitalized for high blood-alcohol content.
The arrests follow a weekend in which 60 students were arrested at a raucous party at two homes blocks away from Lehigh.
Three Lehigh fraternities have received disciplinary warnings and a sorority is on probation for hosting large parties.
Last year, the university president issued a warning about the dangers of “extreme drinking” and, partly in response, increased police patrols.
“We believe that to be effective, efforts to curb behavior that is disruptive to the community, illegal and in violation of the Student Code of Conduct must involve all stakeholders, including Lehigh leadership, the city of Bethlehem, members of the community, law enforcement, landlords and, perhaps most importantly, students themselves,” Lehigh spokeswoman Lori Friedman said.
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The city created the regulated rental ordinance in 2000 but it wan’t until 2004 that then police Commissioner Francis Donchez announced the protocols were in place. The provision first was used to address complaints in neighborhoods near Moravian College.
It’s unclear if or how many times Bethlehem has used the disruptive tenant provision, but city officials say it fell off the city’s radar in recent years.
The ordinance is based on one in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, that was challenged by a landlords association and held up in U.S. District Court in 1995.
Since then, municipalities across Pennsylvania — including State College; Reading; Kutztown; Elizabethtown, Lancaster County; and Radnor Township, Delaware County — have included the disruptive tenant concept in their ordinances. All contain colleges or universities.
Allentown, home to Muhlenberg and Cedar Crest colleges, calls for eviction proceedings to start after three violations. Allentown has issued 62 disruptive conduct reports this year, spokesman Mike Moore said.
Easton, home to Lafayette College, has a provision after two violations of disruptive behavior.
In Kutztown, police fill out disruptive conduct reports, requiring landlords to come up with a remedial plan and leaving open the possibility of revoking a rental license if the violations continue. State College has a nuisance ordinance that, if violated enough times, could result in revocation of a landlord’s rental license if eviction proceedings aren’t begun.
“I do not think a majority of municipalities in Pennsylvania have such ordinances, but the number of them are increasing in towns which have colleges or universities in their midst,” said Terry Williams, an attorney in State College, where Penn State’s main campus is located.
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He said he is not aware of anyone successfully contesting such ordinances in recent years but said ordinances are always open to challenges.
“What you’re doing is adopting an ordinance designed to regulate behavior and attaching zoning or rental housing permits to that,” Williams said. “Is that something that’s going to be held up down the road? It’s difficult to say.”
John B. Rice, solicitor for Radnor Township, where Villanova University is located, said the township routinely uses disruptive tenant provisions to control town-gown issues, but enforcement requires resources. He said the township developed an appeals process, which can be taken to county court. It took about 1½ years to successfully suspend the license of a landlord who housed disruptive tenants, he said.
“They can work” if they’re consistently enforced, Rice said. “But it can take time, effort and money.”
Michael Schonberger, a landlord who houses about 75 students in rental homes in Bethlehem, said he thinks the city’s ordinance is an overreach that punishes the landlord instead of the person who makes the bad decision.
Rental agreements with college students, he said, are cyclical, making it difficult to replace a tenant mid-semester.
Schonberger said he talks with tenants to avert situations before they become problems. He said most students “are reasonably well behaved” but those who aren’t should be cited. Eviction, he said, seems extreme.
“You have to have pretty bad luck to be caught three times,” Schonberger said. “Some kids have bad luck and are not the cause of the problems, but they get swept up in it.”
Noelle Jacobsen, a senior at Lehigh, said many students living off campus are aware of the ordinance.
Jacobsen, who was not at the problem parties, agreed students should be respectful of their neighbors, but took issue with how students are being labeled disruptive tenants. She wondered if police officers are overstepping when they break up parties and what they label disruptive behavior.
She questioned whether someone under the legal drinking age of 21 should be labeled as disruptive if they have, for example, a 0.02 percent blood-alcohol content.
Rosemary Frey, who moved to the South Side in 2001 and watched the homes around her be converted into student rentals, said the evidence is within earshot. On some weekends, she said, the noise from weekend parties is louder than Stabler Arena.
“It’s not even the music so much as the talking — hundreds of kids in the yards — and the smell of urine. It was awful,” she said. “They drink, and many get up on the roof of an A-frame garage. It’s dangerous.”
She said the disruptive violation provision is nothing new, and she tried to use it once. She said what has helped is enforcement. After the police crackdown on parties two weeks ago, she said her neighborhood was quieter last weekend.
Continued police presence and citations, she said, will curb bad behaviors.