Location: San Luis Obispo, California.
We live in a single-family neighborhood near Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Cal Poly doesn’t have a Greek Row. Fraternity houses are not allowed in the neighborhood, but dozens of fraternities have rented houses and are operating as full-fledged fraternities embedded in the single-family neighborhood. Neighbors have taken video and gone to the City Council since 2021, and they have not done anything to help solve the problem, probably because Cal Poly students bring a lot of money to the city’s economy.
One neighbor is a first-responder, EMS helicopter pilot, and was having to miss work because of lack of sleep from noisy fraternity parties and screaming guests coming and going from the 40 illegal fraternities in the neighborhood. He started a website with videos and documentation, but the City still didn’t do anything. Then they went to the local news, and the paper ran a front-page story, but the City still didn’t do anything. The Daily Mail also picked up the story. Still, no action by the City.
Several neighbors wrote to the Grand Jury for San Luis Obispo County, and the investigation found the City failed to protect the neighborhoods and was “in the Twilight Zone about the city’s zoning”. The Police Chief blocked testimony requested by the Grand Jury of two officers which hampered the investigation. The Grand Jury visited the neighborhood and found the conditions were “almost unlivable” for residents when it released its report last month.
The city is denying that they did anything wrong, and the fraternities continue to have crazy parties from Thursday night to Sunday, trash the neighborhood, vomit, and use people’s yards as toilets, etc.
What can the neighbors do since the City isn’t doing anything to solve the problem? There is no peace on weekends.
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I’m assuming this is already happening, but someone’s calling in noise complaints to the police whenever this is happening correct?
Zoning codes changed since the lgbt movement. They used to refer to related persons. Now most r1 codes moved to living as a single family unit. Have you read your local zoning code? What does it say?
“Live outs” aren’t chapter houses. The charter is most likely addressed somewhere else and people are renting the homes as sfr.
Lawyers live challenges. Find one.
Honestly if your city isn’t enforcing codes it’s time to encourage folks to run for city council.
Have you tried contacting the national organization of each individual fraternity? They may not like the negative light this is going to paint on them. I would include any incident reports from police.
NAL, but I watch city politics a lot and I went to some parties in Ann Arbor MI when I was a student.
It looks like the grand jury report just came out so maybe followup with the city and university to see what their following actions will be. https://kprl.com/grand-jury-releases-report-on-parties-fraternities-in-slo-6-25-2025/
Well the first thing you can do is create a political movement and support candidates for Council and Mayor that will take action. The problem is that SLO students form 45% of the population so it will be hard to get a majority vs a student friendly candidate.
A second thing you can do is hire a lawyer to sue the house occupants and the property owners directly and if you have a group of neighbors you can do this together. The grand jury report should be a real asset in terms of evidence of the problem. The property owners will likely get scared and try to take action or just sell the properties. The property owners likely have lease conditions which are getting violated but at the same time they are probably happily making mint off the students.
A third thing you can do is contact the university administration and bring it to their attention as they might have rules for things like this but they will likely not take action for anything that is off campus and illicit frat houses. How does one distinguish between a group rental vs a frat legally ? If the house is not officially part of the greek system then it is independent shared housing and the cities responsibility.
A fourth thing you can do is sue the city, but they will use a lot of deep pocket moves to defend and it will take years.
Otherwise you are stuck with it and maybe have to sell and move away which the university and students would likely be happy about.
Keg-stands!