Columbia is mostly renters. New group wants city attention on longtime residents
How much influence should neighborhoods, and their passionate residents, have over the future direction of Columbia?
That question was at the heart of a Monday night candidate forum hosted by a new coalition of more than a dozen neighborhoods, organized with the intention of strengthening those community voices to better impact city policies.
At the forum, candidates for Columbia City Council answered questions like, “How do you intend to incorporate the neighborhood priorities described … into your decisions by council?”
And, “What changes would you make to more effectively include neighborhoods in policy decisions?”
The responses from the 11 council candidates who attended the forum ranged from assurances that those voices are already being heard, to declarations that the status quo isn’t good enough, to practical acknowledgements that the neighborhoods themselves are not always on the same page.
Indeed, not every issue facing Hollywood-Rose Hill and Wales Garden is also a priority in Melrose Heights or Forest Hills. But there are clear throughlines: affordable housing, public infrastructure like sidewalks and road safety, and considering neighborhood concerns when enacting city policies are just a few of the concerns this new coalition can agree on.
“What we said we’re going to do [is] try to support each other overall and get more involved in terms of communities working together to make things that are common to all of us, to push those things hard,” said Gwendolyn Singletary, who leads the United Alliance of North Columbia Neighborhoods, which is a part of this new coalition.
In a city where more than 50% of residents are renters, this new group hopes to advocate for the other half of the city’s population — the people who have, or would like to, buy homes and plant roots in the capital city.
The coalition, formed by former Richland County Council member and Wales Garden resident Kit Smith, came up with “six policies and aims of neighborhoods,” a document they are referring to as “SPAN.”
The hope, Smith said, is to regain some of the power many community leaders say has been lost in recent years.
What is this coalition and what is it asking for?
The idea started with Smith, who has been a longtime convener on issues like student rentals, Airbnb regulations and “cleaning up” the once bar-centric strip of Harden Street in Five Points.
Years ago, “the neighborhoods had a strong voice,” she said. “It was probably out of balance.”
She recalled a time where there was greater overlap between neighborhood association leadership and members of the city council. The neighborhoods were probably too opposed to development and had too much sway in those conversations, she said.
But in recent years, she and others have felt that power slip away. She used the city’s 2023 ordinance regulating Airbnbs and other short-term rentals as an example.
“We lost on that two years ago, we didn’t get anything that we wanted,” she said. Notably, many neighborhood leaders advocated that the rentals shouldn’t be allowed in residential areas. The city council considered that request and even drafted an ordinance with that provision, but then walked that limit back after Airbnb operators poured into community meetings saying that such a provision would effectively ban their operations altogether.
The city is now reconsidering how to handle short-term rentals, and it’s not immediately clear if Airbnbs in residential areas are at risk again. But after losing that fight in 2023, Smith said it felt like neighborhoods had become complacent.
“It’s probably correct that the pendulum has shifted against the neighborhoods in recent years,” said Howard Duvall, who served on Columbia City Council between 2015 and 2023.
There were more than 100 active neighborhood associations across Columbia when Duvall first took office, he said. Now, the Columbia Council of Neighborhoods lists 43 of those associations on its website.
What neighborhood power looks like also depends on who you ask. Councilman Peter Brown has repeatedly said the city welcomes feedback from any and all interested parties, and the city council has paused to consider that feedback more than once. Mayor Daniel Rickenmann, too, pointed Monday to broad investments in infrastructure across the city, and a concerted effort from the city council to address homelessness, as a couple of examples of how Columbia is already doing work on the issues neighborhoods say are important to them.
But Smith and several other community leaders said that feedback doesn’t always feel like its being fully considered. The hope, she said, is that by bringing the neighborhoods together under one umbrella, they will have more support to deal with issues specific to their areas, and there will also be stronger representation for the issues that transcend geography.
These are the six policies they presented to candidates Monday night:
- Balance policy making with neighborhood interests, this includes in decisions about new developments, the makeup of regulatory boards, and how zoning affects communities.
- Improve neighborhood infrastructure like sidewalks, parks, green spaces and traffic, with fair divisions of penny tax dollars.
- Make and/or keep entertainment districts safe by challenging liquor licenses of bad actors and requiring “spacial separation” of new bars.
- Develop policies for the unhoused that seek housing solutions and addresses systemic issues.
- Protect affordable housing by addressing the growing number of student rentals, the displacement of long-time residents in neighborhoods where people are being priced out, and restricting short-term rentals in residential areas.
- Impress visitors by focusing on city gateways.
Neighborhoods participating in the coalition are: Booker Washington Heights, Cottontown/Bellevue, Elmwood, Earlewood, Forest Hills, Greenview, Historic Heathwood, Hollywood-Rose Hill, Martin Luther King, Melrose Heights, Olympia, the Vista, University Hills, Wales Garden, Wheeler Hill, and the United Alliance of North Columbia Neighborhoods.
“We were sort of amazed that some of the common issues began to really bubble up, and it wasn’t just downtown or 29203 … or any particular district,” said Denise Wellman, president of the Cottontown neighborhood association. “We do feel that [neighborhoods] are the crown jewel of the city and should have a strong voice in how council makes decisions.”
