Letter to the editor: Density dangers

To the editor:

My wife and I lived in the University Place neighborhood south of campus for 21 years, from 1975 to 1996. We lived in a 1920s “bungaloid” (Dennis Domer term). During those two decades, we watched with concern as investors gobbled up single-family homes in the area for conversion to rentals. It was especially apparent in the 1800 block of the streets from Louisiana over to Arkansas. Our house had rentals on both sides. Tenants were, for the most part, students. Lots of late-nigh noise. Lots of tenant turnover over the years. Lots of cars competing for parking, even parking in yards. No effort was ever made by the city to control the number of unrelated people in the houses in our experience. Landlords on both sides of our house neglected property upkeep. In addition, many high school students parked on our street during school hours rather than parking in LHS parking lots. We eventually left the neighborhood because we feared other houses on our street would become rentals and the “density” problems would only get worse, impacting our property value.

I hope University Place finds a way to return to mostly owner-occupied single-family homes, rather than suffering even more “density.” Blanket rezoning for the sake of simplicity makes no sense here. I agree with Pam Burkhead of the dangers of rezoning.

I won’t even get into the water runoff issues.

Chris Johnson,

Lawrence