Bottom Line - Neighborhood wins against off-campus wildness By Bill Briggs, msnbc.com contributor Residents still talk about the night of the naked dancing girl. They describe how she grooved au naturel on their block in Stillwater, Okla., as another kegger raged at a rental house nearby. In the family-heavy neighborhood of Westwood, which borders Oklahoma State University, the lewd lady embodied the residents' recent fight for peace and sanity amid an influx of student tenants, many living in large houses bought by their out-of-state parents. After the housing-market crash made buying a house near OSU smarter than paying dorm fees, students" cars soon clogged many of Westwood's streets and front yards. Residents say off-campus parties frequently ran late and loud. Beer bottles and pizza boxes were strewn in nearby yards. To escape an area in swift decline, several long-time owners posted for-sale signs. Today, those same owners are staying put. Westwood's former frat-row feel has nearly faded and property values have been saved, locals say, thanks to homeowners who won new zoning and parking restrictions limiting the number of OSU students in the neighborhood. They predict other college towns will copy their successful blueprint. I don't think any of us could have guessed how much improvement we would feel. It's amazing," says Gary Clark, a Westwood homeowner who led the push to protect the neighborhood. He also serves as vice president and general counsel at OSU. The vast majority of students are good neighbors. You get a few who, occasionally, can be irritating. We just want a nice neighborhood that's safe for children," Clark said. We're not trying to be vindictive. We're not trying to move students out. The students make this community tick. We certainly want them to feel welcome. Indeed, in small and moderately sized college towns like Stillwater -- where 45,600 residents and 23,500 students live -- controlling student encroachment into the community requires a delicate touch, school and city officials acknowledge. With roughly 6,000 employees, OSU is a huge economic engine for the region. Still, some students have publicly complained that the Westwood clampdown left them feeling "unwanted." Under a new city ordinance, no more than four unrelated people can reside in the same Westwood home. Eventually, the limit will be three. A separate city measure also restricted parking to one side of the street throughout the neighborhood, allowing better access. This was not an issue against students. This was an issue against irresponsible people -- whether you were a student or a landlord," says Ron Beer, a homeowner there for 17 years. An alcohol-free campus and lower housing prices fueled the off-campus exodus, Beer believes. The five-bedroom house opposite the couple hosted rowdy weekend parties. Its front yard turned muddy after vehicles entered and exited the lawn. A recent record check by Westwood homeowners found that absentee landlords own about 35 percent of the neighborhood's properties. Some owners are the parents of OSU students. Case in point: the place opposite Ron and Cara Beer. That home was bought in 2007 by then-OSU student Barrett Boone and his family, Boone confirmed. He has since graduated and now lives and works in Texas. He rents the house to five OSU students -- at $370 per bedroom, or $1850 per month total, according to a recent Craigslist posting. Under a "grandfather" clause in the ordinance, Westwood rental properties already containing more than four unrelated tenants are allowed to retain that number for five years. "I'm against (the limits)," says Boone, 24. It's a college town. I don't think regulating the amount of people who are living in a house is the way to do it. They jumped the gun before trying to work it out in other ways. Having disincentives for people to live (off campus) seems like an old way of thinking. Old notion or not, the new tranquility felt by many Westwood owners has spurred fresh talk of similar restrictions in other Stillwater neighborhoods near campus, says Stillwater City Councilman Chuck Hopkins. "We are using Westwood as the model," Hopkins adds. "And I'm sure, after we have another year under that ordinance in effect, and everything is truly worked out, we will start getting calls" from officials in other college towns who need advice on managing their booming off-campus populations. Consider the battles underway in three places where economic factors -- including cheaper homes -- are luring sometimes-raucous undergrads into the surrounding communities: Homeowners near Quinnipiac University, about 20 miles north of New Haven, Conn., use a Facebook page to document -- via photos and text -- examples of student misdeeds off campus. The page has 145 "likes" and contains images of a stray beer cup and a dented mailbox. "Let's take back our streets and make our neighborhoods a good place to live for our families," wrote the page's creator. In Philadelphia, City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke wants to ban virtually all student-based housing in neighborhoods near Temple University. Clarke has described the off-campus behavior of Temple students as "out of control." A 20-minute drive north of Orlando, in a suburb bordering Central Florida University, the wheezing real estate market has drawn UCF students to rent cul-de-sac houses. Homeowner Beth Kassab, who lives in the Oviedo, Fla., says several subdivisions already have organized to try to implement stricter policies against college renters. In Stillwater, Ron Beer has dissected the numbers and fully understands why the parents of some college students are plunking their kids in what used to be spacious family homes or kid-friendly subdivisions. They are saving the money that normally goes toward dorm housing fees -- and earning a profit, he says. "But people tend to get greedy once they see this market," Beer says. If they have the resources, they may even snatch up several houses and, before too long, they own five or six. It becomes different focus. It's an income source. All we're trying to do is say: Be reasonable about it. Limit the number of tenants. You don't have to recover your (purchase) costs in three years. Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of "The Third Miracle."