'TIS THE season for housing headaches. Bewildered first years trudge through apartment complexes off streets they've never heard of, strain to think of reasonable questions about plumbing and parking passes to ask overworked real estate agents and plead with parents that it is absolutely necessary to pay hundreds in utilities costs because "everyone lives off Grounds."
It seems that leases are being signed earlier and earlier each year, by students who are less and less likely to be familiar with all their options and more likely to rush into a living situation with new friends they hardly know. Any student with friends at other universities knows that U.Va. has one of the earliest housing processes of any school, and this is due almost entirely to the pressure to sign a contract with a private landlord for an off-Grounds apartment. And while upperclassmen may simply roll their eyes at the inconvenience of having to decide where they'll live next year almost as soon as this one commences, for a first year new to the University, the situation may pressure them into signing a binding contract that may not be in their best interest, without knowing all their options.
Housing has tried valiantly to provide an alternative to the off-Grounds lease-signing madness, hosting, according to Director of Accommodations John Evans, "two programs that had students and staff from all of the upper-class housing options to explain about the communities, programs and facilities available," as well as the manager from the Off-Grounds Housing Office. But the pressure to compete with non-University housing means that the University itself has had to require an increasingly earlier decision from students.
One of the reasons that "the date of the assignment process has been moving forward for the past couple of years [is that] the administration has received complaints from students and parents over the years noting the difficulties created by the pressure to sign off-Grounds leases long before students received any information about what their on-Grounds choices might be," Evans explained in an e-mail. So even students who choose to live on Grounds are being progressively more pressured to make decisions earlier each year.
The Off-Grounds Housing Office and Student Council have also worked hard to make the best of a bad situation, and for that, should be commended. The OGHO will "act as both a consumer advocate and educator that will help give advice to students on everything they need to know in deciding whether to live off Grounds and where to look," according to Student Council President Noah Sullivan, who also noted that Council "developed a Student Tenant Bill of Rights last semester, which contains many provisions that landlords would have to agree to in order to be a partner with the OGHO." It's reassuring to see the University and our student government working so hard to make this process more accessible to students, and Sullivan is "hopeful that we can make a lot of progress this year on the issue."
Yet students are often ignorant of these resources just a few months into their first year, when the pressure to sign a lease begins. One solution to the confusion would be to train Resident Advisors to be liaisons to these programs and offices, and have each hold a meeting with their first-year residents to explain the process. The initiatives on the part of Student Council and Housing have the potential to greatly benefit overwhelmed underclassmen, but they do little good unless these students are aware of their presence.
All of these efforts, however, treat only the symptoms of a serious housing problem in our community.
It's time for local landlords and complex managers of private housing in the University area to start being responsible neighbors. Their scare tactics of warning students that their options will run out by December and general pressure to sign early affects all U.Va. students, not just those who choose to live off Grounds. In a recent Inside U.Va. article, Wade Tremblay, general manager of Wade Apartments, was quoted as describing the rent dollars of University students as the "engine of the community," and it's time for he and his colleagues to return the favor by laying off the high-anxiety hard sell during first semester, especially for first years. On-Grounds housing can then comfortably push back their application deadlines, and students at U.Va. might actually have the opportunity to make a wise, informed living decision -- headache free.
Katie Cristol's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.
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