A proposed bill may prohibit Temple students from residing in areas around Main Campus.
On Sept. 22, City Councilman Darrell Clarke introduced a bill that would halt development projects for student housing in the area around Main Campus.
The bill seeks to prohibit new multiple-family dwellings, apartment houses, tenement houses, student housing not owner-occupied and fraternity and sorority houses from North 19th Street on the west, Lehigh Avenue on the north, Ninth Street on the east, southward along Ninth Street to Cecil B. More Avenue, westward along Cecil B. More Avenue to 13th Street, southward along 13th Street to Girard Avenue and Girard Avenue from 13th to 19th streets on the south.
Clarke reportedly cited students’ disrespectful behavior and tension between students and long-time residents in the community surrounding Main Campus as reasons for introducing the bill, as Angelo Fichera explores in [Ordinance seeks to remove student housing, tensions, p. 1].
A similar bill was introduced and passed in Yorktown, another community neighboring Main Campus, that has been a subject of debate during the past few years.
While there is no doubt that Temple should take more responsibility for housing its students, The Temple News will never support incidents of discrimination in any way, and no matter how Councilman Clarke might suggest his intentions, this is still discrimination.
Last year, Temple Student Government with several partners introduced a Good Neighbor Policy, which asked students to be aware of the community they were living in and to be respectful of it and of their neighbors.
Students are not always the best neighbors: Late hours, noise and trash are frequent and legitimate complaints of community members. However, not liking the behavior of a group of people does not make it OK to try and prevent them from inhabiting an area. Students are still adults, and proposing a bill that blatantly attempts to prevent any other group of adults from inhabiting an area would be laughable. This is no different.
Additionally, Councilman Clarke should remember that Temple and its students directly influenced the revitalization of the North Philadelphia neighborhood.
And while it is far from all students who need this advice, The Temple News would like to see all students adhere to the Good Neighbor Policy. Improving the relationship between members of the community and transient students is ongoing, but shouldn’t be neglected.
The old, bitter, drug & alcohol abusing, ignorant and racist people living in the Yorktown community make absolutely no sense in their attempt to fight against individuals looking to drop big bucks into their drug ridden, inner city blighted, grocery cart pushing, ghetto. No DECENT family in their right mind would want to reside in North Filthy and the majority of people who live there, only stay because they can’t afford to leave.
These Yorktown Fools prefer to leave abandoned houses scattered throughout the vicinity and treat COLLEGE STUDENTS as criminals when they allow their own kids & neighbors to rob, steal and sell drugs right out of their own backyards. Black people like myself should be embarrassed by the actions of these Yorktown Fools. I would NEVER raise my children in such a broke down, beat up community. Without Temple, Yorktown would be nothing. This sorry excuse for a community has absolutely no validity and no future and it is only a matter of time before these people rot away and their kids sell their souls, LIBERATING the landscape of lost hope…