Our Neighborhood
Alta Vista
We live in the Alta Vista neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods around California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly. It’s directly to the south of campus and is a desirable neighborhood for students because it’s within easy walking distance. It’s a relatively small neighborhood compared to other small cities, about half a mile wide by about a quarter of a mile deep. Although small in size, during the 2022-2023 University academic year, what came to light was that this small residential pocket of houses was home to at least 40 illegal fraternity houses.
When we moved here, the neighborhood was made up of an eclectic mix of people: students, current and retired professors, working and retired professionals, families, musicians, physicians, restauranteurs, City employees, and the San Luis Obispo City mayor. All lived their respective lives, coexisting. Many long-term residents kept in touch through group emails via the Alta Vista Neighborhood Association.
How it was
There were Cal Poly student parties and some student noise. It usually came from down the hill somewhere over on Hathway Avenue or somewhere on Foothill Boulevard where the fraternities are. An elderly couple used to live opposite us, but then they moved away, and some college students moved in. The elderly man would come back, from time to time, to mow the grass and walk around the property doing maintenance. I would wave, shout his name, and a greeting. The student neighbors from across the street were great. One year they left Halloween candy in our mailbox for our children with a note that they loved our Halloween decorations; another year, we carved pumpkins with other student neighbors who lived next door, up the hill. We enjoyed our student neighbors. We hosted a barbeque and invited all our neighbors to get to know them better. Kathie was even featured in a video for Cal Poly shown to students during Week Of Welcome (WOW). Students interviewed her and she promoted positive relationships between students and permanent residents. Life was good.
Housing
In 2016, in response to the housing crisis in California, the state legislature passed two bills (A.B. 2299 and S.B. 1069) that required cities and counties to allow Accessory Dwelling Units, ADUs, on most residential lots, particularly on lots with single-family homes. ADUs have many names like granny units, in-law units, and the goal of passing these state bills was to restrict local zoning ordinances and permitting processes to provide affordable housing, which is needed. They’re “affordable” because they don’t require purchasing land as land is very expensive here. Cities cannot require parking and the permitting process is streamlined. The ADUs offer a source of income for homeowners with the extra bedrooms. Bedrooms are a premium in this neighborhood with its easy walking distance to campus, and now investors can add two to four bedrooms onto a lot already containing a five-bedroom house. More bedrooms mean more income from student rentals. Bonus.
How it is
It’s the Fall of 2021. Alta Vista has seen a lot of changes since we moved here. Only a handful of permanent residents are left, many of them elderly, living in the homes they’ve occupied for many years. When one of them passes away, the family will no doubt sell the house and it’ll become a college rental. It’s usually snapped up by investors who transform the once charming homes into five-to-seven-bedroom student rentals. Money-makers. I don’t blame them. That’s capitalism, economics, or whatever you want to call it.
In 2023, the Tribune published an article “How student demand is fueling an ADU boom in the neighborhoods near Cal Poly” with investors cashing in on the critical need for student housing in our neighborhoods by adding ADUs.
Evolution
In the Fall of 2021, we noticed the ambient noise grow much louder. Loud parties with larger crowds than usual were more frequent in the neighborhood, as the number of fraternities had exponentially increased.
Several neighbors in our neighborhood group reached out to others, saying that the noise levels had increased to unbearable levels. Some said they had resorted to turning up their television and running fans to dampen the noise. One neighbor said that a fraternity lived next door and they had to keep their windows closed even though the weather was hot, and they did not have air conditioning. Calls were made to the San Luis Obispo Police Department (SLOPD) but the parties didn’t stop. We noticed the SLOPD dispatch log showed noise calls being cleared by officers as “Negative Violation”, “Unable to Locate”, or “No Report” which is the same as a negative violation.
In November 2021, a few months in from the marked increase in noisy parties and SLOPD clearing the parties without citations, Kathie began documenting the raucous parties with video so she could send them to SLOPD and ask why they were not being cited.
This is the first video. It shows parties at 322 Hathway and 348 Hathway which could be heard from a block away but were both cleared by the officer as “Unable to Locate” or “UTL”. She sent the video to the newly-hired SLO Police Chief, Rick Scott, expressing her frustration at the increase in loud parties with no accountability because the parties were repeatedly being cleared by SLOPD as not violating the noise ordinance or the officer saying they could not locate the obvious party.
He replied, “We have a good history of holding our student population accountable and my expectation is that will continue.” He said he would look into the call but there was no follow-up and loud parties continued, and mostly were not cited even though the parties were an obvious violation of the City’s Noise Ordinance.
Calls to SLOPD for loud fraternity parties were routinely cleared without citations and we continued to document and send video to SLOPD. We also sent videos, like the one below, to the Police, City Council, and the City Manager showing that loud parties that were obvious violations of the noise ordinance were cleared by SLOPD as a “negative violation” of the noise ordinance. But there was never any resolution to the problem. Most Council members did not respond but one who did said she did not know what she would do if that were happening near her in her neighborhood. At least she acknowledged that it is not a normal situation in a residential neighborhood.
In the Fall of 2022, a fraternity moved in next door on Fredericks Street. Two satellite fraternities had set up across the street from us. One directly opposite us at 1270, another further down the hill at 1220, and another would install itself four doors down from us at 1229. Yet another was a few houses up and around the corner at 434 Kentucky. There were others at the end of our block on Hathway Avenue and several more on the next street over, Bond Street. Parties at each of these houses could be heard from our home, and parades of people walked from party to party during weekends.
Tenants at these houses were impossible to reason with once drunk and held mega parties of up to seven hundred people. Yes! Seven hundred people in the backyard of a house. It happened. We witnessed it, right across the road from our house.
By 2024, more fraternities moved in. We were further surrounded by the density of illegal fraternity houses and their noisy parties, drinking games, and other negative impacts from Thursday to Sunday. It seemed all a fraternity had to do was rent a house in the neighborhood, plant a flag, or install Greek letters. Once their “claim” had been made, it was license to hold music and beer festivals. Regulations, City ordinances, or neighbors be damned.