For almost as long as there have been students at what is now Towson University, there’s been friction between the neighborhoods surrounding the sprawling suburban campus and the students who attend it.

The latest effort to tamp that down is a Baltimore County Council bill that would establish a pilot University Housing District within one mile of the campus. The legislation, which Councilman Mike Ertel proposed after extensive meetings with nearby residents, would restrict the number of new rental licenses the county could issue on blocks where rentals already account for 30% or more of the properties.

Towson University has seen rising demand for student housing as more students want to live on or near campus and not commute. The university, which has been adding housing and working with developers to add more, has not opposed the legislation.

Neither will the Maryland Multi-Housing Association because it represents apartment communities for the most part, a spokesperson said.

The bill will largely impact smaller landlords and larger, national ones that are buying up single-family homes for rentals.

Baltimore County Councilman Julian Jones, who is a real estate investor, was skeptical of the bill.

“I guess my concerns come in when you start telling people that own a piece of property that they cannot rent it out,” said Jones, a Woodstock Democrat.

The growing housing demands of the school’s 20,000 students has prompted investors large and small to buy into nearby neighborhoods in increasing numbers, Ertel said. Some homes are purchased over the asking price and converted for student renters by adding more bedrooms, he said.

“So, they know right out of the gate they’re going to rent that to four or five people,” Ertel said.

Ertel has been sounding the alarm on the risks such conversions create in the event of a fire, especially for renters living in basements. He cited a January 2006 fire in College Park that killed University of Maryland student David Ellis, who could not escape his converted basement apartment, which prompted that town to introduce tighter rental restrictions.

According to Ertel, such housing generates more trash, which neighbors believe has contributed to rat problems along the York Road corridor. It also reduces green space and adds to stormwater runoff as landlords add pavement to accommodate more cars, he said.

Baltimore County law prohibits more than two unrelated people from renting a property together unless they have a special exemption or the property is a designated boarding house. However, Ertel acknowledges, no one enforces the law.

Thus, more affordable neighborhoods around Towson University — including Burkleigh Square, Knollwood, Towson Mews, Towson Green, Towson Manor Village and Anneslie – which could be attractive for first-time homebuyers, have seen rising numbers of student rentals.

Ertel’s bill comes as there have been national complaints, including from President Donald Trump, about institutional investors squeezing first-time homebuyers out of the market by bidding up the price of homes.

Ertel settled on this pilot program after struggling with solutions to this issue as a community leader in Towson and now as the area’s official representative. He said he hopes it leads to more creative solutions that protect both students and the neighborhoods and encourage home ownership in those areas.

Towson also faces issues with some commercial landlords that are often out-of-town firms that aren’t invested in the community.

In the past few years, for example, all of the restaurants at Towson Square have closed, and the Indianapolis-based owner, Kite Realty, has not found replacement tenants. The vacancies have frustrated Towson leaders for nearly a year.

The company has nonrecourse loans on the property, so as long as it makes money elsewhere it can lose money in Towson, according to local developers familiar with the process. Officials at Kite did not respond to questions, but local officials said they’ve been pressing the company to get the property rented.

For the university district bill to pass, Ertel needs four votes, which could be tricky since Jones is one of the council’s four Democrats.

Sarah Judd, who has lived in Towson Manor Village since 2018, said she’d hoped the house next door to her would sell to a young family like hers. Instead, she said, an investor bought it, and he was showing it to four college students last month.

“My luck hasn’t run out — it’s been bought out," she said. “The only people who can afford to buy these amazing, well-priced small homes are investors — people with multiple properties, built-up equity, and no real stake in the community."

Justin Levy, who owns The Music Space, said the families who move to Towson, whether they buy or rent, invest in the community. They shop downtown, enroll their children in music lessons, frequent the local library and otherwise make the community vibrant. Out-of-state investors and the students they rent to are not making those same contributions, he said.

“Neighborhoods are not meant to be financial instruments,” Levy said. “They’re the foundation of a town. If Towson becomes a place where only investors can buy and everyone else just cycles through, then our schools lose, our businesses lose, and our neighborhoods lose.”