Student Senate urges cities to move signing dates for leases to February

Students that would normally be scrambling to solidify their living situations for the following academic year in the early weeks of first semester might be resting easier this fall.

On April 2, the Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution urging the Champaign and Urbana city councils and the Savoy Board of Trustees to adopt an ordinance prohibiting a lessor from entering into a lease or pre-lease more than 200 days before the contract takes effect.

Jaclyn O'Day, junior in LAS and student body president, authored the resolution.

She said the main two reasons for the proposal are that freshmen have about six weeks to decide where they will live the following year after arriving on campus for the first time, and graduate students do not know if they have been accepted to the University when lease signing begins for many landlords on Oct. 1.

The date the resolution proposes would fall somewhere in the second week of February for leases starting at the end of August.

"We felt that the first semester as a freshman, you get to meet people and decide who you want to live with," O'Day said.

Esther Patt, coordinator of the Tenant Union, suggested some of the language in the resolution.

She said campus apartment leasing first slipped back into fall semester during the 1996-1997 school year.

The senate should learn from the current leasing situations in Madison, Wis., and Ann Arbor, Mich., Patt said.

Both cities have passed laws prohibiting landlords from showing units and offering leases within specified amounts of time.

The problem with these laws, Patt said, is that landlords have adopted the practice of pre-leasing, where they take money from students without showing the apartment first.

"There's nothing worse than having people put down money without people seeing a place without having negotiated the lease," she said, adding that an effective law would need to close this loophole. "Then the landlord could present you with a horrible lease, and people sign it because they've already put money down."

The main advantage of such a law would be that students would be more likely to get to know each other before signing a real estate contract together, Patt explained.

Finding roommates six short weeks into the semester can spell disaster for students who study abroad, develop roommate problems or do not end up returning to campus.

"For freshmen, this is really vital," Patt said.

Patt added that another problem with the current leasing situation is that many landlords are still distributing the previous tenants' security deposits when it is time to start showing again.

"I know there are landlords who think it's wacky to sign a lease 10 months in advance," she said.

Jim Nogle, owner of Illini Manor, said he would prefer that lease signing not start early in the academic year; however, he said he has to respond to what the market dictates.

"It seems every year, it has gotten earlier and earlier and earlier," Nogle said. "It's harder on the landlords because we have to figure out our costs earlier and sometimes we guess wrong."

Robert Dunn, senior in Engineering, said students often resort to knocking on apartment doors as early as the first day of classes in order to secure living arrangements for the following year through a "passdown." He added he supports the resolution.

"Freshman year, you meet people in the dorms and have to decide who you want to live with right away," he said.

Although he is in favor for second-semester lease signing, Nogel said he is not sure that government regulation is the best solution.

"I'm not one in favor of government control like that," Nogel said. "I am in favor that if there is a way to start the leasing process later in the year, it is advantageous for both landlords and students."