Waking up to her front yard covered in beer bottles was not what Florence resident Carol Covington had in mind for starting the day.

Residents say cars blocking driveways, party remnants littering streets and yards, and loud noise blaring all hours of the day and night are some of the plagues associated with sharing a neighborhood with college students.

“That’s not what we want in our neighborhood,” said Olive Street resident Stan Simpson. “When I moved in, it was one of the best streets in town, and I don’t want my street taken over.”

Covington said on many occasions she called police because student neighbors were disturbing her.

“I had to call the police several times because they would pull their couch out in the front driveway and have their parties there instead of being on their back patio or something where it’s not as noisy,” she said. “I would wake up after one of their parties, and I would have to go clean my front yard, and their cars were parked in front of my house.”

Simpson said he and other residents want to maintain the neighborhood’s formerly family-oriented atmosphere.

“A lot of times if there was a party, they have trashed the neighborhood,” he said. “There were Solo cups and beer cans in yards and on the street, and one time one of the neighbor’s young children walked in with a beer bottle and said ‘look what I found in the front yard.’”

City Council President Dick Jordan said he regularly receives complaints from the community members about the way students treat the city.

One of the most common concerns among citizens is students do not respect the different type of lifestyle families live compared to their own, Jordan said.

“Students need to remember these are residential neighborhoods,” he said. “We have small children, families, the elderly and working adults, and they live on a completely different schedule.”

Freshman Zakaria Alibrahim said his student neighbors sometimes disturb him and the other people who live on Pine Street.

“Two weeks ago they had party until 1:30 or 2 in the morning,” Alibrahim said. “The police came to them. They told them you can’t be loud after midnight in the week.”

He said some of his other neighbors are older people who probably have very different schedules from most college students.

Parking issues top the list of complaints city officials receive, Jordan said.

The city’s zoning ordinance prohibits parking on grass, parking on the side of the street where traffic is oncoming and designating more than 25 percent of a property for parking.

Jordan said when multiple students move into a single-family home in a residential area, they are violating the ordinance.

“The big thing is when you have three or four or five people parking at a residence, and they’ve all got cars,” he said. “The max you can really have is two to three people.”

A home zoned as R-1, or single-family, should have only members of one family plus one other relative or friend living there, according to the ordinance.

Florence resident Susan Goode said many members of the community, like her, invest their life savings in their homes.

Goode said cars parked on the grass, high levels of traffic and loud noise drag down the values of those investments.

The “real problem,” she said, is a city ordinance that bans these actions, but does not allow enforcement.

Florence Building Official Gary Williamson said when a complaint is filed about parking on grass or multiple people living in a single-family home, his office sends a notice of violation to the property owner of tenants.

“If the problem keeps happening or they don’t get it corrected, we can send a letter for them to appear in municipal court,” Williamson said.

Goode called on city leaders to enact a new ordinance that allows police to do something about the violations.

“We need a good neighbor ordinance — one that can actually be enforced,” Goode said. “We can’t solve the problem, but our city leaders can.”

Jordan said he plans to address these concerns by working with other councilmen to revise the current city ordinance or by bringing forth new legislation.

He also said better communication between the city and the university will improve relations between residents and students.

“I want to get with the administration, city leaders, the students and the SGA president to discuss these problems,” he said.

Vice President for Student Affairs David Shields said these problems are not unique to UNA and Florence.

“This is happening at colleges across the country,” Shields said. “Typically if we receive a complaint about a student the police chief or I will try to get over there and say ‘we’re getting complaints on you.’”

He said university officials explain to students the city police could get involved if the problems, including parking on the grass, parking the wrong direction on the street and being loud, are not corrected.

Students who break city laws can also be brought before the university’s conduct board, he said.

“If you’re a college student at UNA, our policy says we can deal with off-campus behavior if it has an adverse effect on the university,” he said. “If you’re living in a neighbor and causing our neighbors to be mad at us as a university, then you’re having an adverse effect on us.”