Off-campus housing sees increase in pricing
The Narragansett Town Council’s three-student ordinance is under fire from community members once again with the implementation of a rental registration form for student renters.
On Sept. 20 at the bi-weekly town council meeting, students and full-time residents raised concerns about the new policy, calling it “discriminatory” and “an invasion of privacy.”
Evan Morrill, the principal owner and director of student rentals at Narragansett Properties, said that the main difference between students renting houses for only three people versus more students is the price of rent.
“When I first started 10 years ago, the price for one of the top-notch houses was maybe $550 a bedroom, and that’s for a house on the beach,” Morrill said. “Over the years, it usually goes up $150 every time they pass an ordinance. Now, your average price is $900 a bedroom, which is outrageous for you guys.”
Morrill explained that the town council passed this ordinance in order to keep families and summer renters in the area and to reduce the number of students living in the town. However, he said that this is actually having the opposite effect.
“If your neighbor is renting to college kids for nine months and making $900 a bedroom, meanwhile you’ve got a family renting at $600 a bedroom for 12 months, wouldn’t you kick that family out and rather make more money off of college kids?” Morrill said.
He said that he attended a town council meeting last year to warn the members about this possible effect and claimed that the council didn’t believe it was going to actually happen. At the time he attended the meeting, Narragansett Properties had already acquired over two dozen houses that used to be family homes.
At the beginning of September, the town council announced that in order to enforce this ordinance, they are requiring landlords renting to college students to fill out a rental registration form online that states all students’ names and addresses.
Morrill believes that the town is trying to make it so that landlords have to “jump through hoops” in order to rent to students and are hoping that eventually, they will just give up on renting to students.
“I think that it’s a lot of empty threats, and I think the town realizes that,” Morrill said. “I think they’re aware that if they were to throw someone out of a house, that there would be a legal battle that the town can’t afford.”
His suspicions were correct. At the town council meeting on Monday, Oct. 3, councilman Patrick Murray expressed similar concerns to other members of the council.
“I believe we’re setting ourselves up for another lawsuit again,” Murray said. “Under the 14th amendment, equal protection under law, even though students are not a protected class under housing, you can’t have one rental policy and then have another rental policy with another.”
Murray continued by saying that he believes the rental registration form is unnecessary for landlords because if there is a problem with a house, the town can call the homeowner and find out who lives there.
Jesse Pugh, president of the Narragansett Town Council, responded to Murray at the meeting on Oct. 3 by saying that they will consider an amendment to the rental registration form to make it inclusive of all renters in the town rather than targeting students.
The Narragansett Town Council will discuss the rental registration form further at future meetings that have not yet been announced.