USF Housing gets Failing Grade from Third Ave. Residents

By Paul Kozakiewicz

Some residents on Third Avenue have a real problem with their neighbors.

At the end of summer, the University of San Francisco started moving furniture into two flats at 569/571 Third Ave., near Balboa Street, to accommodate 10 students. When the current semester started in September, the students moved in - much to the chagrin of neighbors.

So far at least five complaints have been logged with police and many more with administrators at the university.

Residents living near the university's off-campus housing say the youth conduct loud, rowdy parties with groups of 20 to 30 people, skateboard on the sidewalk in front of the house and smoke cigarettes continuously while throwing cigarette butts on the sidewalk. They also complain of overflowing trash cans, vehicular parking on the sidewalk, excessive noise and an occasional student who urinates in an alleyway between the students' flats and neighbors' homes.

One Third Avenue neighbor, Taylere Joseph, said she called police when a large group of students was skateboarding at 3 a.m.

"Kids will be kids but we're living in a residential neighborhood," Joseph said. "They should be on campus."

In an effort to get a handle on the situation, Glenn Loomis, the director for off-campus housing at USF, had discussions with the students concerning their behavior and he has moved an older, graduate student into one of the flats to monitor house activities.

"We try to be the best neighbor we can," Loomis said.

Loomis said the university has many off-campus housing sites and that some of the properties are purchased and some are rented.

At the 569/571 Third Ave. site, the university has leased the property from landlord Peter Yan. According to neighbors, there is a three-year lease, but Loomis thinks it is more likely two years.

Yan legally evicted two long-term tenants at the Third Avenue property and moved his family into the two flats. After the required two-year minimum stay at the site, the family moved out and Yan was legally able to re-rent the flats.

According to several residents living near the USF housing, the university snuck the small-scale dormitory into the neighborhood and failed to notify them of its plans.

"It was a very covert operation," according to one neighbor who did not want to be identified. "The neighborhood was never told anything about it."

The neighbor says that in one incident still under investigation he saw one of the students living next door holding a lit cigarette lighter on window blinds in the apartment at 2:15 a.m.

The person stopped when the man yelled. The next day a student living in the flat told him there was no arson intended - the person with the lighter was only trying to burn a moth that had landed on the blinds.

Legally, no notification was required because the SF Planning Department does not care how many people live in a unit. Since there was technically no change in use, there were no public meetings or hearings.

Loomis denies that the university did anything wrong and he says the university used marked vehicles to move furniture into the flats.

Besides having an already tight parking problem in the Inner Richmond being made worse for residents living near the USF housing, some residents say the university is making money on their misery. Each of the students living in the flats pays about $8,000 for nine months rent, he said, resulting in gross receipts to the university of almost $9,000 a month while students are at the site.

Loomis refused to discuss the financial costs of housing for USF students or the terms of the university's deal with Yan. He said young students want vehicles but that he tries to discourage car ownership and encourages the use of mass transit.