HomeMy WebLinkAbout5/26/2026 Item 5a, Irion
Doug Irion <dirion@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, May
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:IFC president’s request to deregulate my neighborhood
Dear Council members,
I am writing in response to the IFC president’s request to deregulate my neighborhood and allow
fraternities carte blanche.
When I bought my house eleven years ago, nearly all the homes on my block were owner occupied. Now
most of the homes are rented to students, with at least two of them rented to fraternities. Once a house
is rented to a fraternity, it is almost inevitable that the house will be rented to that fraternity in perpetuity.
Landlords get addicted to the kind of money that can be extracted when these guys willingly pack
themselves like sardines into these once proud single-family dwellings. Maintenance of the property also
becomes less important, because it is no longer necessary to entice new renters to the property. Shrubs
are removed, the yard turns to dirt, and eventually to rock or astroturf.
Fraternity members exhibit identical behavior year after year. Beer pong is a religion. It is practiced
almost every day, and features continuously shouted obscenities paired with an outdoor low-frequency
speaker that produces a continuous thud, thud, thud that can be heard blocks away. It is the kind of
noise that penetrates deep into the home and cannot be mitigated.
I could go on and on, but to do so would be a betrayal, because I actually like the fraternity guys on my
block. I feel sorry for them. When I was in school, I lived in a fraternity house with 70 guys in it. We did not
have to worry about how much noise or garbage we made. We could do this because all the other houses
in our neighborhood were fraternities or sororities. Our fraternity house was in an R4 neighborhood.
The Cal Poly fraternity guys should not be forced to live in a residential neighborhood like mine. Instead
of having supplemental overflowing garbage bins with no place to store them (inevitable when, e.g., 8
guys live in a 4-bedroom house), they should have a dumpster bin…in an R4 neighborhood.
Instead of having to park four cars in a tiny driveway and two cars on the street in front of their rental, they
should have a parking lot or be encouraged to leave their cars at home when they are at school…in an R4
neighborhood.
Instead of having to shut their party down early, they should be allowed to party on without fear of noise
complaints…in an R4 neighborhood.
Single-family dwellings are not suited for these students. My neighborhood is full of enviable, mid-
century housing stock that Cal Poly Staff and Faculty would love to live in (as they did originally) if a
proper noise ordinance is in place and enforced. The shiny new Fac/Staff housing that Cal Poly is
building is adjacent to the proposed fraternity zone. Has Cal Poly so little regard for their employees as to
consider effectively torturing them with noise and ugliness?
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Thank you for your consideration.
Doug Irion
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