One of the glories of being an adult is getting your own apartment. But that glory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when students find themselves victim to housing that is in complete disarray.
It would be easy to paint a picture saying that defenseless students are being taken advantage of by the evil apartment corporations. But it’s not that black and white — students make these problems for themselves.
The fact of the matter is, most college students don’t know any better and don’t think to ask if what’s going on is wrong or illegal, for that matter. Big companies know this, and some of them will exploit it if they can.
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“Knowledge is power, and that’s all there is to it. You’re going up against guys who have been in the business for 30 to 50 years, so they know the ins and outs,” said senior housing inspector Stan Laverman. “They know what you’re looking for, and they know what to tell you. So you have to gain a little knowledge yourself and say, ‘What am I actually getting here.’ ”
It can be as simple as them not cleaning the carpet before you move in or as serious as your finding things broken and then getting charged when you move out.
“The easiest way [to avoid being fined] is to document everything …” Laverman said. “You have a smartphone, you can just do it off of that, and then you just keep that file, and do a verbal documentation of what you saw … And if you do that and they come back and say, ‘There’s a carpet stain,’ and you have that [file], there’s no way they can fight it.”
The 562A section of the Iowa Code specifically states that when landlords turn over a unit, it needs to be safe and sanitary. When this code is broken, students can actually get these problems fixed, but only if they speak out about them.
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“Where we get into issues is students will sign a lease that states, ‘We are taking a unit in the condition that it’s been provided for us, because we want to move in on the first, and that’s what we’re going to do,’ ” Laverman said. “Or that take possession of a unit without doing a walk-through.”
There are ways for students to look into the apartments they’re thinking about leasing before they move in. Laverman said all housing records in Iowa City are public and available online at icgov.org under rental permit info. Also, Student Legal Services is available through the Division of Student Life.
“They do a good job of walking students through what legally they can do and can’t do,” Laverman said.
Ultimately, students just need to grow up and be actual adults. They need to research the apartments more than just looking up the address. They need to go on walk-throughs, speak out by providing professional complaints in writing if they have any, and plan ahead by creating and saving their documents for further use.
By doing their research, students can stop turning themselves into victims of landlords and instead become well-informed renters prepared for off-campus life.
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