Kathie Walker lives in the Alta Vista neighborhood, just outside of Cal Poly’s campus. As a family of Cal Poly alumni, the Walker family moved to the area to experience the blend of long-term residents and students living together.
However, the reality has not been what Walker imagined. The family started a website, howtoruinaneighborhood.com, to document their experiences living amongst fraternity houses.
“Imagine your next-door neighbor decided to open a nightclub,” the website reads. “The thumping music from the nightclub, particularly the bass, penetrates your bedroom walls on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. People stumble along the sidewalk between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., making their way to another club and randomly screaming and yelling.”
In Walker’s neighborhood, there are dozens of illegally-operating fraternity houses, according to a recent SLO Tribune article, because they are operating in low-density zoning areas.
During a San Luis Obispo City Council goal-setting workshop on Saturday, Walker urged council members to make neighborhood livability a major city goal. She hopes the city will prioritize funding additional resources to increase code enforcement.
“Many long-term residents have moved away and, if it was financially feasible, our family would do the same,” Walker said during public comment. “The larger point, though, is that we shouldn’t have to move. We’re living in a residential neighborhood where fraternities aren’t legally allowed to be and yet there are about 50 of them.”
In the workshop, the council identified six major city goals, including “Housing and Neighborhood Livability — healthy, safe and affordable.” The city operates on a two-year cycle and will use these goals to guide their budget for the next two years.
“Cal Poly does not at this point have a Greek row for social fraternal organizations to house their organizations,” Vice Mayor Michelle Shoresman told Mustang News. “Those students live in our neighborhoods. There’s definitely always a push and pull between when students want to be active and when our residents and families want to be active.”
Walker does not believe the fraternities in her neighborhood are entirely at fault. She thinks they simply rented single-family homes without realizing the zoning laws restricting the area.
“The city has been somewhat permissive in allowing the proliferation, and [the fraternities do not] know any better,” Walker said.
Walker said these fraternity houses make it hard to sleep and live peacefully. Her husband, an emergency medical services helicopter pilot, has missed work due to consistent loud noise throughout the night.
“He’s not been able to sleep to get adequate rest and can’t safely do his job,” Walker told Mustang News. “I was up until 2:30 in the morning last night because of all of the noise surrounding our home.”
Despite these challenges, Walker said she loves her student neighbors and maintains relationships with some who have graduated. She hopes the city will make her neighborhood more livable.
Shoresman also hopes the city is able to provide resources and dedicate staff to assist in neighborhood cooperation. Beyond cohabitation, Shoresman believes housing affordability is an issue that affects everyone living in the San Luis Obispo community.
“Housing is very expensive here,” Shoresman told Mustang News. “It’s very difficult to come by and 66% of our community are renters. There’s a lot of difficulties in dealing with that kind of housing for this many people, especially when rental housing is in such high demand.”
Leading up to the goal-setting workshop, the council gathered community input through a survey and forum last month. The council will begin reviewing budget drafts in April and will adopt the final budget in June.
“We try really hard as a city to engage with the community and give them the opportunity to tell us what they think that our major city goals and priorities should be,” Shoresman said. “It’s always great to come together with all of that information.”
While city staff are still able to provide input, the council chose six tentative major city goals at the workshop:
- Open Space, Climate Action and Resilience
- Infrastructure and Sustainable Transportation
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- Cultural Vitality, Economic Resilience and Fiscal Sustainability
- Housing and Neighborhood Livability – healthy, safe and affordable
- Homelessness Response
