While most people are anxiously awaiting the first sign of warm weather, Marc Laderman dreads the first two weekends of summer.
Laderman, who lives on Gainsborough Street, has a small son, and said when the first two weekends of the summer semester roll around, sleep is pretty hard to come by.
“The first thing people do is party on the fire escapes,” Laderman said. “They don’t realize how even two people talking on a fire escape carries through the narrow alleyways.”
Laderman, who is a longtime resident of the city and is the president of board members of the Fenway Community Development Corp. (Fenway CDC), said while he enjoys living among students because of the energy and activity they bring to the community, he feels the community is incomplete due to the steadily decreasing number of families and small children in the area.
Despite Northeastern’s push since the 1980s to keep a majority of students in on-campus housing, almost 50 percent of students still reside off campus. Since individual students living together can afford to pay more than a family looking for a two or three bedroom apartment, landlords have been raising prices every year for the past decade, pushing many families out of the area, said Jamie Smith, director of community organizing for the Fenway CDC.
Smith said from 1990 to 2000 the number of college or graduate students in the Fenway neighborhood increased by 18 percent, while the number of children under 18 declined by 37 percent.
“It’s been a constant battle to keep the families we have [in the neighborhood], to protect the families and also to expand and bring the families we’ve lost back into the neighborhood,” Smith said.
Vice President for Government Relations and Community Affairs Bob Gittens said due to landlords looking to make the biggest profit possible —