 "Photo: Stephanie Nehmens, Assistant City Editor")
After a long day at school and work, Kelly Grover's roommate Hannah curls up in her bed for a good night's sleep.
But there's one glaring problem Hannah has while trying to catch some Z's - and counting sheep won't fix this one.
It's the light and noise in the living room coming through the hole in the top left corner of her bedroom.
The makeshift wall their landlord had installed to separate Hannah's room from the living room hasn't quite cut it, or rather, it wasn't cut right.
A crumbled up newspaper stuffed into the hole has become the permanent solution to Hannah's sleeping woes. She and Grover have been living in this house since May 15, and they've come up with creative solutions. While an old newspaper doesn't exactly flow with the décor in the rest of the home, the condition of the living area makes one out-of-place newspaper the least of the roommates worries.
Step into Grover's room, a "bedroom" in the middle of the garage in which three of the four walls are made of drywall. There is carpet on the floor, but the ceiling by her room that covers the rest of the garage has exposed fiberglass. When it's disturbed, it's dangerous because small pieces of glass can fall onto the floor, on someone's body or into clothing. Grover and her roommates have to walk under this ceiling to get to her room and the washing and drying machines.
Their landlord charges $2,600 per month to rent the one-story, originally three-bedroom house that now has five bedrooms. The landlord profits, and when the rent is divided by five, it also creates an affordable living environment for students occupying the home, such as Grover, a business junior at San Diego State.
A single-family home such as this one in the College Area surrounding SDSU is an example of what many homeowners and what San Diego City Councilmember Jim Madaffer refer to as a "mini-dorm" - a home with several college students or other renters living in it.
"This is not a new problem," said Doug Case, the coordinator for fraternity and sorority life on campus and the president of the College Area Community Council. "In the 1980s, SDSU had a lot less campus housing than it does now (Chapultepec and Cuicacalli residence halls had not been built yet) so a lot of homes in the area were purchased by investors and they started adding on bedrooms and rented them out.
"It was kind of a mini-dorm, so that's how the term came about. But over the years, people have started to consider any home where students live to be a mini-dorm."
Case said the term "mini-dorm" is not a legal term, nor does it have one set definition, and Associated Students Vice President of University Affairs John Ly agrees.
Ly said some of the mini-dorm homes, which he prefers to call single-family homes, are not actually mini-dorms and some rooms have been legally added onto houses.
He added that the reason illegal additions to single-family homes still exist is the lack of enforcement because there are already laws in place that outlaw the unsafe and not up-to-code houses in the area, including homes with exposed fiberglass.
One such law is San Diego's Land Development Code, which states what a bedroom legally is. One of the requirements for a room to be a bedroom is that it must have a standard door opening. Some of the surplus bedrooms in the single-family homes in the College Area are actually converted dens or offices with large "door" openings that are not a standard door size.
The recent clarification of this code, which is posted on Madaffer's Web site, has been instituted to ensure there are fewer illegal bedrooms built. The clarification also states what a bedroom is so that landowners cannot circumvent the parking requirement, which is that for every single-family home in which there are five or more bedrooms, there must be off-street parking spaces available. Some landowners did not have space to create off-street parking spots for their tenants, so they have tried to pass off rooms they have rented as offices instead of bedrooms
Landowners whose properties do not have a garage or driveway occasionally pave over some of the front yard to create the requisite off-street parking, which has angered other College Area residents who say parking on the front yard is not attractive and devalues neighboring properties.
Current San Diego law states that 30 percent of a front yard must be used for water drainage, in other words, a lawn, Ly said.
This gives landowners the freedom to pave about 70 percent of the front yard for parking spaces as the city of San Diego will issue a maximum of four "B" parking permits to the residents in a single-family home in the B parking permit area, which is the College Area.
"I don't think (the limit) should be exceeded, so if there are five people living there they should only get the limit (four parking permits)," said Dan Cornthwaite, SDSU executive director of Associated Students who's been a College Area resident since 1998. "They should not park it in the front yard.
"I think it should maybe be reduced to 50 or 60 percent. You're also going to degrade the appearance of the neighborhood if people are paving over the front yard."
Cornthwaite, who's also a College Area Community Council member, said disruptive tenants aren't always just students.
"It could be anyone who moves in who decides to have loud or ruckus parties that disturb their neighbors and do not maintain the look of the place so that it's unkempt and it affects the other homes it affects property value and families," Cornthwaite said. "It's nothing against students.
"I feel very strongly about the plight that students feel when they need to find housing, but they need to take care of the property and so does the landlord by maintaining it in a way that's consistent with the area and neighborhood that is surrounding it."
To keep the area under control, the College Area Party Plan program was put into action by the San Diego Police Department to regulate residents who have become a nuisance to the neighborhood. If the SDPD cite a house more than once in one month, if five or more neighbors complain or if an arrest is made at a house, it can be CAPPed, which means there is a one-year restriction put on the house and tenants cannot make noise that can be heard within 50 feet of the property during that year.
The SDPD's 2006 CAPP final statistics as of summer 2006 show that 180 houses in the College Area were CAPPed, and 134 of those houses are still CAPPed under their one-year restriction period.
Ly is in charge of the Good Neighbor Program, which consists of SDSU students visiting each house that has been CAPPed to educate the residents on the ordinances and laws of the neighborhood, including noise violations, trash regulations, upkeep of property and parking rules (someone who parks a vehicle in the "B" parking permit zone must have a B permit to park there from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays).
But despite these efforts, the community still sees problems.
To address issues, Madaffer held a meeting on Sept. 19 at the College Baptist Church on College Avenue for College Area residents. About 400 residents showed up, annoyed with the condition of their neighborhoods.
This prompted Madaffer to write 13 proposals to create a more harmonious living environment in the College Area. A subcommittee of the CACC, the committee on mini-dorms and the CAPP program, has reviewed them, and today the Land Use and Housing City Council Committee is expected to do the same.
The committee, chaired by Madaffer, also includes councilmembers Kevin Faulconer, Tony Atkins and Jim Hueso.
A meeting is scheduled at 2 p.m. today to review and vote on Madaffer's proposals, which could change the way thousands of SDSU students, such as Grover, in the College Area live.
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