An off-campus housing system in need of improvement

After reading the article in the Daily last Thursday, I was somewhat disappointed by the administration's response to the off-campus housing issue, and for a variety of reasons. Dean of Students Bruce Reitman all but laid the burden of handling affairs at the students' feet. To an extent, I can't blame him, because it's true that the University can't control off-campus affairs. But after listening to fellow students in various environments complain about landlords, and how the landlords don't listen to them, I'm not sure that Tufts is doing enough to equip them with skills and information they need to handle these problems with their landlords. I like Yolanda King's plan to hold information sessions, and I'm responding in part due to her request for suggestions, and partly in the hopes of setting up a discussion that's more about suggestions and solutions than about complaints.

To begin with, the off-campus situation is aggravated by a few factors that come to mind immediately. First is the previous absence of an Off-Campus Housing (OCH) office to deal with these issues. I'm in the REAL program, I'm a little older, and I've been mishandled by enough landlords that I know my way around a little bit better. The vast majority of the student population doesn't have the same wherewithal. As has been pointed out, most of them just don't know any better. And a decade of that may well have led to landlords being comfortable with taking advantage of students. Second, many students don't have cars, either, so they have to live close to campus, which limits their options. They can live farther away, if they don't mind a commute by subway, followed by waiting for a shuttle bus, but commuting might not always be desirable. Third, landlords know they can take advantage of the students, because at worst, they'll be there for two years, maybe three in extreme cases, and then there's a new crop. There are no lasting reputations or ramifications to deal with. And by the time these "kids" (as many landlords think of them) learn the ins and outs of landlord wrangling, they leave.

The OCH website has some decent information, but it's scattered, and not very efficient. Ironically enough, some of the information is taken from the Georgetown website, which is well put together. On the Tufts website, there is some decent information, but the important points are clouded, and surrounded with worksheets that may or may not really be applicable. Focusing on the legalities and the more immediate issues of dealing with landlords and leases rather than lectures on planning and budgets will help. Most of our students don't have to plan to stay in a hotel while they look for apartments, for example, nor do they have to take dependents into account while budgeting. The code checklist says to check for rats and roaches (is this actually local code, or just something to check for?). Another says to find out who's responsible for extermination. One list implies that the things shouldn't be there, the other says you should find out if it's your problem. Which is right?

I'm not saying that the budgeting and planning suggestions are a bad idea, since not all students have had to deal with those issues yet, but it makes the site read like a workbook, rather than an organized purveyor of information. Some points on handling leases and examining rooms are there, but other, better suggestions are found on the Georgetown page that our site references. Things like taking pictures before moving in, having friends with you as witnesses when you inspect, things that help the students cover their butts when it comes down to dealing with the landlord and getting their deposits back. For those of you looking for apartments next year, there's a lot of good information on the Georgetown website that our school hasn't really focused on. It's concise, detailed, and has a lot of important pointers OCH missed out on, and you don't have to filter through it to pick out the important stuff. Look it up. Print it out for future reference. Unfortunately, the Tufts OCH website reads like a cut-and-pasted together pile of miscellaneous information by comparison, so hopefully Georgetown's complete guide will help. Some of it obviously applies to renting in Washington, but the rest is very worthwhile.

Another good idea would be to have some of the more pertinent Somerville and Medford building and fire codes collected together and posted on the Tufts site, in an easily accessible format. The Somerville site is awkward, and it's hard to find some things. If they're all presented in one place without having to search for them, it makes life that much easier. Do our students know how to use a computer? Yes. Should they be able to find this stuff themselves? Yes. But I don't think that means that making a more usable reference guide is a bad idea.

Another suggestion I have is to start an ongoing student comment board about their apartments, once they leave. If a current student is looking for an apartment, it would be nice to have such a board as a reference. If the landlord has been problematic with previous students, that's good information for a prospective tenant to know before they go look at that apartment. Landlords and/or apartments with problematic histories should be denied listings on Tufts' off-campus housing lists. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean a landlord can't rent an apartment that's not up to scratch to students who are willing to live there, but if current students have access to the landlord's history in dealing with earlier students, they'll be better equipped when going into an interview with him or her, and it might help influence their decision. Hopefully that will give landlords some sense of a lasting impact when it comes to decisions on maintaining their buildings and dealing with their tenants, especially if some apartments remain vacant for a while.

It would also be nice if there were someone a student could go to for help with unresponsive landlords before resorting to the Board of Health. Getting landlords in legal trouble is seldom a pleasant option, since (even if they deserve it) ratting them out to government agencies could get a landlord busy looking for reasons to evict his now-problematic tenants. If landlords had to deal with a more permanent Tufts-based housing office, it would make relations a little more even between the students and their landlords. I have no idea how that would be handled, but since Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced last fall his intent to crack down on code violations in Boston neighborhoods that cater to college students, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to partner with the city. Northeastern University has already done so. Giving students the ability to have the school make the report to the city would be preferable in two ways: a report to the city and/or the Board of Health wouldn't have the student's name on it, and the school will be around after that particular student is gone to let the landlords know that they're still being watched.

The idea Yolanda King had about information sessions is a good one, and I'm surprised it wasn't instituted before. When students enter the dorms in the fall, the RAs sit everyone down, and run over standard policies and procedures, who to complain to, what to do, what not to do, etc. I'm disappointed that the school let down the off-campus community by not giving them similar treatment when the time came for them to move somewhere else. Knowing what to do, who to go to for help, what is and isn't acceptable in a prospective apartment is important, both now, and once students graduate. I don't know of many schools that offer any courses in dealing with landlords or apartments.

For all that the Georgetown off-campus guide was cut and pasted into our website, their mandatory meeting for undergraduate students expecting to live off campus should have made it into the plan sooner. At Georgetown, registration is put on hold for those who don't attend. Clearly, making sure their students are prepared to deal with the problems involved in life off campus is a priority at that school.

A side benefit of such meetings would be that the Off-Campus Housing office will be in better contact with the students, gaining a better working knowledge of just what the students are experiencing out there and giving them a better idea of what they actually need. That way, no-one is operating in an information vacuum, and those in the administration can deal with the students in person, rather than in theory. Perhaps making the first meetings mandatory for students planning to live off campus, even if they're already off campus, might be a good way to start this program, so the input from those who are already out there can be heard, and they might learn something new that could help them with existing problems.

To date, I'm glad that the Office of Residential Life and Learning has been better about getting lottery numbers out earlier, so that students aren't pressured by last-minute decisions when it comes time to sign a lease, as they were last year. Hopefully more changes will be made to the way things are done that will make living off campus more appealing. Once students know better how to handle the ins and outs of being tenants and the local landlords are made to deal fairly, off-campus life might become a more appealing option. As Dean Reitman said, it's still ultimately up to the students to deal with their own apartments, but I think that properly equipping them to do so would be a good idea.

James Watriss is a senior in the REAL program majoring in English.