PULLMAN, Wash. - It's the signature image of the College Hill neighborhood: 200 rioters light a large garbage container on fire and send it hurtling down the hill into a line of advancing police officers.

Things have gotten a bit better in the decade since that infamous 1998 incident, but a new report concludes the neighborhood is still "under stress" from a variety of challenges.

The study said College Hill, private land directly north of the Washington State University campus, remains a place of wild parties and dilapidated houses owned by absentee landlords and rented to WSU students

But College Hill is also on the National Register of Historic Places, with many lovely homes, including fraternity and sorority mansions, and residents who value the beauty and close proximity to their neighbors.

"The neighborhood will always face the challenge of a large population of young adults, many of whom are living on their own for the first time," said Allison Munch-Rotolo, a resident and leader of the College Hill Association.

"But the neighborhood's benefits are tremendous as well," she said. "We've got location, history, character, night life. It's a pretty high quality of life, actually."

The report, commissioned by the city of Pullman and WSU, looks at ways to accentuate the positive aspects, and eliminate the negatives from College Hill.

College Hill dates to the founding the university in the 1890s, and many of the homes were built by faculty and staff. The neighborhood is not part of the campus, but adjacent to it with no recognizable boundary.

It is an area of narrow streets, tightly packed houses and limited parking, with mature trees.

The area has grown increasingly crowded over time as more students reject WSU dormitories and fraternity houses in favor of their own apartments.

That has led to the conversion of many old homes into apartments, the construction of new apartments, and the demolition of old homes for parking lots, the study found.

Washington State University officials have been concerned about the neighborhood for some time, and have a program that allows them to buy some problem houses and renovate them.

"College Hill is our front door," said Mel Taylor of the WSU Department of Real Estate. "Our main concern is the safety of students and the image of the university."

The University of Washington in Seattle has also taken steps to improve the U District community near its campus.

Taylor said the University of Connecticut just created an entire business district and housing area near its campus, and many other colleges do similar work.

The College Hill neighborhood houses nearly a quarter of the city's population, and about 85 percent of housing is rented.

Washington State, whose 18,000 students make up the majority of Pullman's 25,000 residents, requires freshmen to live in one of its 16 dormitories, but between 10,000 and 12,000 upperclassmen live off-campus.

Taylor said the dorms, which are only about 80 percent occupied, are in dire need of upgrades to make them more attractive to students who don't want to live in small spaces and share bathrooms.

"Students and non-students alike do not always feel comfortable on College Hill," the study said. That is especially true of women in areas that have few streetlights, the study found.

Pullman police responded to 190 incidents on College Hill in 2005, and 100 of them were arrests for alcohol consumption, the report found. Theft and drug use were the next highest categories.

Washington State University police do not patrol the neighborhood, although the study has rekindled talks about combining the Pullman and WSU police departments.

Weekends and special events such as the start of fall classes can be loud and unruly.

Ironically, some of the problems stem from the banning in the mid-1990s of alcohol in fraternity and sorority houses, the report said.

"The parties have since moved out of the fraternities and into private housing in College Hill," the report found.

Many of the problem houses on College Hill are occupied by fraternity members who use them to circumvent the ban on alcohol, according to the report, which suggests the university revisit the ban on booze in frat houses.

The neighborhood also suffers from lack of parking, with 1,850 vehicles and only 1,326 on-street spaces, the report found. The problem gets worse as students who don't live on College Hill try to park there for free instead of buying a campus parking pass.

Munch-Rotolo said her family bought a house on College Hill in 1996, and five years later bought a bigger one. Like most residents, her family is tied to the university, where her husband is a professor.

"Some parts of the neighborhood are looking better in the past year, but we have lost some architectural integrity and I would say that litter has become significantly worse very recently," she said.

Many College Hill residents complained about the poor maintenance of some rental homes. Problems occur chiefly at houses owned by absentee landlords, the study found.

Many of the rentals are operated by property management companies, who do what they can to maintain them, the study found.