Advertising junior Megan Schneider lives in a home on Spartan Avenue with more than a half dozen other students. The student crowd is popular on the avenue, which comes as no surprise, considering it has more rental properties than any other street in East Lansing.

Next door to Schneider lives resident Kathy Crooks, 59, who moved to her Spartan Avenue duplex two years ago.

Crooks and her student neighbors have developed a friendly relationship during their time together.

"Kathy is great — we even exchanged Christmas presents," Schneider said. "I also try to shovel her driveway for her before she gets out there and does it herself."

Amid the homes of East Lansing families and permanent residents are 1,591 rental properties — more than half of which lie in the city's oldest neighborhoods north of downtown area.

As East Lansing evolved during its first 100 years into a growing suburb that attracts young professionals and families, the city has remained a college town at heart — composed of 68 percent rental properties and 32 percent owner-occupied properties, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

This mix can sometimes result in tension among residents, and City Council members have worked to strike a balance in the city's neighborhoods, resulting in a city effort to reduce the number of rental homes in the city.

Gaining ground

In 1928, when Jane Noble first moved to East Lansing, rental properties didn't have a corner on the city's housing market like they do today.

"There wasn't much student housing," she said of her childhood years, adding that the housing didn't extend past the then-eastern city limits of Milford Street.

The city of East Lansing began as the home of MSU faculty members and their families, after the university was founded in 1855. But it was student housing that took over East Lansing's neighborhoods during the 1900s.

In 1963, a housing boom sparked the construction of 1,000 student apartments in East Lansing.

Through the early 1990s, a trend of converting homes into rental properties and developing apartment communities spread throughout the city.

"You can kind of look around and see where small apartment buildings were shoehorned into different places," said City Council member Kevin Beard, who has lived in East Lansing for about 23 years.

"What you end up with is lifestyle conflicts."

Since 1986, there have been eight disturbances in East Lansing that occurred in primarily student-oriented neighborhoods. The disturbances resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.

Noble has lived on several student-populated streets throughout her almost 80-year residency in East Lansing and said she considers herself lucky to live among a mix of residents.

She has seen everything from friendly neighbors who lean on one another for help to public urination and flaming couches.

"Kids are young, and they see this as a college town and should be doing things like a college town, and that's not always the case," Noble said. "By the time you are 18 to 20, you should know stupidity."

Schneider, who lives near Noble's home, said she has a pleasant relationship with her permanent resident neighbors because there is a mutual understanding of the environment.

"I feel like permanent residents know what they're getting into when they move here," Schneider said.

Turning the tide

During the past several years, the East Lansing City Council has passed a number of ordinances to help create a balance between students and permanent residents in the city's neighborhoods.

To that end, the council has tried to convert rental properties back into single-family units and has undertaken developments that promote mixed-housing communities. The work is slow-going, as city and U.S. Census numbers show East Lansing had 5 percent more rentals in October 2006 than it did in 1990.

Council members began continuous discussions on the city's rental property situation as early as 2002.

In spring 2003 came a restriction of new rental licenses in certain neighborhoods that didn't expire until October 2004.

But by then, the City Council already had instituted a permanent measure through Ordinance 1035C, which allows residents to petition for restrictions of new rental licenses in their neighborhoods. As of 2006, there were 11 such neighborhoods — containing about 16 percent of East Lansing's rental properties.

"Single-family homes are the most problematic," Beard said. "They were never intended to be occupied by four, five, six, sometimes nine unrelated individuals, and the oldest houses really don't have the plumbing, the wiring or the infrastructure to support that kind of use by adults."

Most recently, the city has delved into a number of developments near the downtown area from the East Village to the West Village, which the council members hope will provide adequate rental housing for MSU students.

"We are trying to facilitate that type of development and really trying to take a look at some of the neighborhoods to convert some rentals back to single-family homes," Mayor Sam Singh said. "We try to make sure everything we do is balanced."

Crooks said she didn't consider the high population of students in the area when she moved to Spartan Avenue, but added that she hasn't encountered many problems.

"I knew it would be a mixture," Crooks said. "I did want to be close to MSU and the activities there.

"We have a very nice relationship; we've been able to talk over things," she said of living among her student neighbors.

Crooks and Schneider said communication serves as the biggest key to maintaining a good rapport with one another, especially if the students' nighttime festivities get out of hand.

"What works really well is if students leave their cell phone number — just a couple times I think I've made a call," Crooks said. "Most of the time it works."

In the end, it's all about cooperation and understanding, City Council member Beverly Baten said.

"You can't just come in and assume that people are going to come in and wrap your arms around that lifestyle," Baten said. "It's just imposing a lifestyle that we have to be aware of."

Kristen Daum can be reached at daumkris@msu.edu.