Regardless of whether you live near a student or a brain surgeon, it's no fun if he or she throws loud parties till the wee hours of the morning and trashes the neighborhood with empty beer cans. The annoyance of residents who endure that kind of behavior is easy to understand. The fairest approach is to, one, hold renters accountable and, two, license landlords, as another part of the city proposal would do. If students or anyone else are violating the law, arrest or fine them. But ultimately, landlords should also bear responsibility.
Landlords already have rights and responsibilities.
We pay taxes and insurance, and if someone's injured on our rental property, you can be sure we'll hear from his or her lawyer. A certified letter arrived in our mail warning that we'd be brought before the Code Enforcement Board if the problem wasn't fixed by a certain date. I was on the phone the next morning to the property manager to make sure the yard was cleaned up pronto. And landlords can then make it plain to tenants. As long as landlords are making a good-faith effort to fix the problem, the city should cut them slack.