Nearly 250 North Philadelphia residents crowded into the sweltering Dunbar School auditorium last night. It was hot, and they made sure city and state officials felt it.

They were there to complain about investors who buy homes in areas zoned for single-family housing and convert them for Temple students.

The air conditioning wasn't working, the microphones weren't working, but amid angry shouting from some members of the audience, the message came through loud and clear:

"We want to know why the city isn't enforcing its ordinances," said Roberta Faison, president of the Jefferson Manor Homeowners Association.

She was one of the community activists who convened last night's meeting at Dunbar School on 12th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

Faison also said she wanted to know "who is telling these investors" when a home is up for sale.

Others at the meeting alleged that realtors are not showing homes to second- and third-generation North Philadelphia residents who want to return to the neighborhood where they grew up.

"They are only selling to the investors," said Corinthia Johnson.

After listening patiently to several city and state officials, the frustration from the crowd became thunderous.

People talked over one another. And they asked why Councilman Darrell Clarke wasn't present.

William Carter, who works for the councilman, said Clarke was out of town, "but this issue is very important to him."

Carter said it was important for the community to call L&I to report instances of students living in houses in the area.

But Mary McCrea, one of the homeowners in Yorktown, said she has been calling L&I for four years.

"We never got any response," she said.

But current L&I Commissioner Fran Burns, who has been on the job for only two weeks, said her presence at the meeting shows that the city is listening to residents' concerns.

And by the end of the stormy meeting, Burns said she would personally visit the area this morning with L&I inspectors.

She asked people in the audience to give her addresses of homes that violate the ordinance.

Central to the residents' complaint is a city ordinance (14-1629) that establishes the "North Central Philadelphia Community Special District Controls."

Under prohibited uses are: Multiple-family dwellings; apartment houses; tenement houses; student housing not owner-occupied; and fraternity and sorority houses.

In an earlier interview, Faison, Jones and other homeowners in the Jefferson Manor and Yorktown areas said they are not opposed to student neighbors - as long as the homeowner also lives in the house.

They said they have no problem if a homeowner wants to rent a room to students.

But they oppose the buying up of homes by investors.

"We have 50 some houses between Yorktown and Jefferson Manor that are owned by people outside the city and outside the state," Faison said.

"There's one landlord . . . who owns eight or nine houses. How can he live in all those houses plus the one listed as his address in New Jersey?" she asked.

During last night's meeting, William Bergman, Temple's vice president of operations, said the university took action to stop listing homes in the area designated in the ordinance for off-campus housing to its students.

More recently, he said, Temple has stopped referring students to any off-campus housing.

Temple students live in dormitories for their first and second years, but must find off-campus housing for the next two years.

John Jones, who has lived on Custis Place near 11th Street for the past 35 years, said the converting of single-family homes to student housing is destroying the quiet quality of the neighborhood.

"It's ruining the neighborhood," Jones said. *

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