With its freshly painted walls, pristine wood floors and beautifully decorated living room, kitchen and dining room, Ashley and Weldon Frommeyer’s University Hills abode looks like a page torn from a Restoration Hardware catalogue.
And with Ashley’s luxury SUV parked out front and a black-and-tan dog barking through the door, the Frommeyers look more like a stereotypical recently married, thirty-something couple than college students.
On the other side of campus, just blocks from the University Lakes, three students rent a quaint, white house with a neatly kept lawn on Morning Glory Street. They park three cars on the side of the house and have a few LSU lawn chairs with cigarette butts in a can on the porch — just about the only signs that students live there.
Back in University Hills, a little more than half a mile from campus, three students live behind an green mini-jungle that doubles as a front yard. Sometimes the men park their trucks in the front yard, which angers the neighbors across the street.
The similarity: In all three houses, students have found ways to live legally in neighborhoods despite laws for single-family zoning that try to keep them out.
Single-family zoning means no more than two unrelated people can live in the same house. A University Hills resident and former University professor wrote the law with Metro Councilmen in the 1960s to prevent students from piling into small houses, throwing wild parties and disturbing the neighborhood.
But these students who have found ways to comply with the carefully worded zoning laws are not alone.
In many neighborhoods around campus, parents are buying houses in their children’s names, landlords are selling portions of the houses to students and renters are doubling-up with cousins or siblings — all to legally stay in houses.
The Frommeyers are an example of the increasing number of parents who are buying their children homes to live in while in college.
The three student renters on Morning Glory Street are an example of what many renters plan with landlords; two of the residents are cousins, so they fulfill the related requirement.
For the unkept male students in University Hills, senior Ashton LaBorde owns the house, and the law says as long as the owner of the house lives in it, he can have up to three additional unrelated renters.
For these cases, and many more like them, no matter how much older neighborhood homeowners may want students out of their neighborhoods, there is nothing they can do.
 
The Beef
The feud between homeowners and students is simple and nothing new: homeowners don’t want loud parties, sloppy lawns and speeding drivers.
The students want a comfortable, affordable place to live with a little privacy and space.
But they just keep butting heads.
Homeowners typically have the law on their side.
Most neighborhoods near the University are zoned single-family. If three friends, for example, rent a three-bedroom house in a single-family zoned area and the neighbors can prove three unrelated people live in the house, the upset neighbors can hand over the evidence to the assistant parish attorney, who will take the landlord to court and get the renters evicted immediately.
In many cases, this is still happening.
In February, Lea Ann Batson, EBR assistant parish-attorney, took a local landlord to court for a zoning violation and forced his four student renters to move out in the middle of the semester. To prove the case, Batson said neighbors took photos of four cars parked in the driveway over about five months.
Batson told The Daily Reveille she is simply enforcing the law and that she has been doing so since the law was passed.
“It just has more publicity now,” said Batson about claims from landlords that her office has just recently started to enforce the law.
Instead of just complaining to each other about it, neighbors are realizing that if they document the violations enough, they can get their way.
But even Clyde Day, the retired professor and 43-year University Hills resident who co-wrote the law, realizes that with certain loopholes in the zoning rules, he is up against a wall.
Day insists he is not against students, but that he just does not want people breaking the law.
“But we have another problem now,” Day said after the University Hills Civic Association meeting Sunday. “It’s parents buying houses for students.”
Day said the ideal situation for student owners would be for them to take some ownership in the property and show the neighbors that they are a part of the neighborhood, too. He even suggested the students come to the annual Easter egg hunt that he and his wife host.
 
“Rosa Parks of Zoning”
Although not necessarily in the same way Day suggested, Steve Myers is giving some renters a chance to have some that ownership. Myers is a Baton Rouge landlord who makes thousands of dollars off rental property on several rent houses in University Hills, Southdowns and other subdivisions around campus.
He said in his bigger houses with three or four bedrooms, he sells a portion of the house to one of the tenants, making it legal for four unrelated renters to live there.
“Oh, he’s a lost cause,” Day said of Myers. “He sells the houses to the students.”
But Myers said he thinks the law is discriminatory against students and selectively enforced in neighborhoods on Highland Road and in Southdowns. In areas north of campus off Nicholson Drive, he said, the zoning laws are rarely enforced.
“It’s the most unconstitutional law we have, and it will be thrown out one day,” said Myers, who is also an attorney.
But Paul Baier, LSU Law School’s constitutional law specialist, said any challenge of the zoning law is doomed.
Baier said Supreme Court case Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, which specifically allows for single-family zoning, trumps any idea that the students may be able to sue. He said the homeowners’ right to property far outweighs the students right to rent.
Myers will continue to rent to students and fight for his right to make money in the neighborhood.
“My rule is one person per bedroom,” he said. “I’m not defending everything a student does, but this law is like spitting on the sidewalk. It’s so minor.”
Although Myers admitted that some of his tenants have broken the zoning laws, he said breaking the law serves a greater good.
“I’m the Rosa Parks of Baton Rouge zoning,” he said. “Rosa Parks violated the law when the law was wrong.”
 
High demand
Still, the most significant argument homeowners make in favor of the zoning and keeping student renters out of their neighborhoods is property value.
“It’s not just against college students,” said Jim Mathews, a Baton Rouge resident who lives near campus on Highland Road. “But it’s about the property values. [Renters] lower the property values with noisy parties, increased traffic and poor upkeep of yards.”
But University student Pike Barkerding, a business junior who lives in a two-bedroom house with a nicely manicured lawn in University Hills, said he doesn’t think the property value always goes down with renters or students.
Barkerding’s father bought the house when his older brother came to the University a few years ago. Since then, all three brothers in the Barkerding family have lived in the house.
Next year, Barkerding is going to move into his fraternity house on campus, so his father sold the house. Barkerding said the property value didn’t drop.
But with the house across the street from Barkerding’s, neighbors may have cause for some concern.
Ashton LaBorde, a general studies senior, owns the University Hills house across the street that has overgrown foliage in the yard. He lives with two other students.
But still, Myers said there is no factual basis for claims about property value decreases.
“That argument is ridiculous,” Myers said. “There is such a demand for property in that area.”
Will Strahan, an employee at the East Baton Rouge tax assessor, said his office doesn’t evaluate property values in neighborhoods, but said the neighborhoods around campus have seen tremendous jumps in property values in the past six to eight years.
“Location, location, location,” Strahan said. “A lot of people buy older houses in [Southdowns] and fix them up. That makes the neighboring property go up.”
 
Still Renting
As for the student residents, LaBorde said he thinks the neighbors are unfairly singling out students.
The three girls who live on Morning Glory are moving out at the end of the semester.
But one renter in the house, Rachel Dalyrmple, a elementary education junior, said she’s looking to rent another house in Southdowns.
Ashley Frommeyer, a general studies sophomore, said her brother is moving out after he graduates this semester.
Her parents were considering renting out the house when she graduates in two years.
Meanwhile, Myers said he thinks Day and the other civic association homeowners who document zoning violators should find more important things to do.
“Maybe [Day] should find some volunteer work in the community,” Myers said. “Or maybe they should just raise the retirement age.”