School Daze - Jay Benanav

School Daze - Jay Benanav "represents" me in the Saint Paul City Council, in the same way that Ellen Anderson and Alice Hausman and Betty McCollum and Mark Dayton "represent" me in St. Paul or Washington or Roswell as the case may be; my neighbors elected him. Don't blame me.

He ran for mayor in 2001, on a platform of (if memory serves) creating an ordinance against unhappiness and putting a surcharge on people who pay taxes and obey laws.

He's back in action now, with a proposed ordinance that unwittingly highlights the myopia of much DFL policy; limiting the number of houses per block that may rent to college students.

The hearings on Friday are reported in this morning's Strib:

The ordinance, proposed by City Council Member Jay Benanav, would apply to one-and two-family houses, not apartment buildings, college-owned housing or fraternities and sororities.

Bill Cullen, a member of the St. Paul Association of Responsible Landlords, said the ordinance would not solve the problems that concern most residents, such as rundown rental properties, noisy late-night parties and parking congestion.

Indeed, no.

This is classic DFL policy: react to the crimes of a few with a broad-brush approach that inconveniences and harms the many, without actually dealing the the problem of all those pukin', moonin', defecatin' college punks.

The ordinance will do nothing to deal with this problem at all; college parties aren't a matter of density, they're a matter of houses full of arrested adolescents and "girls gone wild", away from home and bored and with too much money on their hands. Limiting the number of college rentals per block won't keep bored college kids from screwing up.

But it will make college housing more expensive, less convenient and harder to find for everyone, troublemaker or not; when government artificially changes the supply of a thing, it inevitably changes the price.

Targeting troublemaker students would make much more sense - but that would put responsibility on the back of the colleges and universities in question. And avoiding responsibility is what they're best at:

Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at the University of St. Thomas, said the university supports the ordinance because it's the university's responsibility to take care of landlord-student issues. "We work with landlords to create expectations to be respectful [to neighbors]," he said.

But if the city will do it for you, at its own expense, that'll make the job easier, won't it?

This is a stupid idea that punishes the law-abiding and does nothing to address the real problem; disinterested landlords, bored, irresponsible college kids, and the colleges that want to collect their tuition checks.

Posted by Mitch at June 16, 2003 08:19 AM