Throwing off the shackles of on-campus housing can be a relief. No more anxiety about the sleeping patterns of your randomly selected roommate, no more unannounced fire drills when you are just trying to take a shower, no more unwanted exposure to the compulsory Britney Spears spinning parties thrown by that girl on your floor. But this dream can quickly turn into a nightmare if your off-campus abode comes with a landlord or landlady who makes your life miserable. Some of these landlords from hell can be found right on the University's Auxiliary Housing website, a problem that can be solved by a joint effort from both students and the Auxiliary Housing office itself.
The office explicitly denies responsibility for the apartments listed and the individuals marketing them and as such cannot be held accountable for deceptions that are the result of leases sealed through the website. But the mere presence of landlords on the Brown listing service lends them an air of authenticity and credibility. Students are inclined to assume — and understandably so — that the advertisements on the listing service are more trustworthy than those on other websites, such as Craigslist, whose users know that they will have to separate the wheat from the chaff when looking for their humble palace.
We all know the stories of landlords asking for advance deposits or all of a sudden "misplacing" the memory card with the pictures of those lovely Victorian ceiling details on it. But that's okay — the simple fact that this happens through Craigslist is enough to set off alarm bells in the student's head. But through the age-old power of association, this should not be the case for Brown-affiliated housing. Just the appearance of the University logo in the top-left corner of the browser is enough to persuade students that "the landlord is legit," as one graduate student put it. Sadly, these expectations are sometimes unfounded.
Take the case of an unnamed graduate student who found a nice furnished apartment perfect for an international student like herself. When she arrived, the landlady had rented her bed to someone else, telling her that "there's a carpet in the room" when asked how this problem should be resolved. Two weeks later, I found myself helping said graduate student haul the long overdue bed up the stairs while the perfectly able-bodied landlady refused to move a finger. Then the refrigerator broke down. And the shower drain became clogged. All she heard from the landlady was a deafening silence. When the student told her landlady that she wanted out of the lease via the one-month notice specified in it, the landlady not only called her a slew of bad names, but also told her that she would drag her to court.
It all could have been prevented. When she contacted the graduate student lawyer and Auxiliary Housing, it turned out that the landlady had come to their attention before. But since no one filed an official complaint, there was nothing they could do. The negligence of students to report all bad experiences to the Auxiliary Housing office, either because of the time commitment or out of fear of further escalation of the conflict with their landlords, is inexcusable. It ensures that other students walk into the same trap when they should not have to. When reported, the landlord can face exclusion from the listing service — "Brown University reserves the right to deny placement in and/or remove from its housing service any listing(s) by any individual or company for any reason which it deems sufficient," the terms and conditions read.
But there are other, less effort-intensive ways in which students could share their landlord experiences. There is the possibility of a testimonial that could appear next to the landlord's name on the website — with a disclaimer that these reflect the students' experiences, to absolve Brown from any legal liability — or the simple thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate appreciation or disapproval. To protect such a community-feedback system from outside spamming, the possibility to share one's experiences could be restricted to students with a Brown email address. The argument that a public forum could provide rancorous students with an open platform to slander a landlord is an important one, but not likely at all. Those who are unwilling to make the effort to file an official complaint can probably not be bothered to do so officiously either. It will certainly benefit the many upstanding landlords in Providence, and when tenants are required to provide references to secure an apartment, why should we not expect the same of landlords?
Of course, one always has to exercise caution and use common sense before entering any type of contract, but a feedback system could make the Auxiliary Housing website more worthy of the Brown seal of approval that unofficially hovers over it. After all, no one likes a house from hell, except maybe when it's Halloween.
Suzanne Enzerink GS is a master's student in American studies from the Netherlands. She is happy with her landlady and can be reached at suzanne_enzerink@brown.edu.
