Coming to college as a first-year, students are often living away from home for the first times in their lives and must cultivate a new sense of independence to adjust to their new lifestyle— figuring out how to talk to new people every day, navigate campus, and create their own schedule.
And a few months in, around October, just when they feel like they maybe have everything figured out, it’s time to figure out where to live next year. Landlords begin searching for new tenants to fill their houses and apartments come summer, and the scramble to find off-campus housing is a vicious one. Students who have barely left the comfort of their childhood homes must now figure out where to live in what feels like the distant future, how to decide if a lease is good or bad and find people to live with after being in college for only a matter of weeks. Such conditions can lead to rash decisions.
For this reason, Winona State University Housing and Residence Life partnered with Engage Winona and Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services (SMRLS) to put on a Renter’s Rights Workshop on Thursday, February 13 for students looking to live off-campus to attend.
Dan Wilson works as a policy assistant at Engage Winona and helped to organize this workshop. He also attended Winona State and recalls that as a student, he faced similar difficulties trying to find housing, much less housing with a good lease.
He says that it is important to “make sure that you engage with your landlord in a way that, if you have a conflict, how do you resolve that conflict in a way that doesn’t make it easier for your landlord just to kick you out.”
A big part of that is reading your lease carefully and understanding the rights that you have as a renter. The same situation can have different outcomes based upon how the renter handles it.
“Renters have a fair amount of rights, but it’s just knowing how to use them and making sure that that feels accessible.” Wilson said.
The main presenter of the evening was Joel Kinder, a staff attorney for SMRLS. He talked to attendees about what to do before signing a lease, what rights renters have while living somewhere, and how a lease ends or could end early. He emphasized the importance of completing an inspection of the rental right when moving in to make sure everything works, and the landlord doesn’t charge you for something you didn’t do.
“Close the mini-blinds or see if there’s any slats missing or go around and open all the cupboard doors,” Kinder said. “Make sure all these little things function…not all landlords are terrible, but many of them, if they can, turn that cost on you instead of themselves.”
He also explained that if a landlord does not fix a necessary problem in the rental within a certain amount of time, the renter has the right to put their rent in escrow, meaning that they will not pay rent to the landlord but rather to a court that will then pay the landlord back a portion of the rent when they fix the issue. Simply not paying rent because a landlord does not fix something can prompt eviction. Kinder stresses the importance of withholding rent in this legal manner to incite action that will not result in eviction.
It is vital for students to be educated on their rights before moving off campus. Uneducated people can be easy to take advantage of, but with the right steps taken to be made aware of how to successfully rent a property, students can make the most of their housing situation so that they can continue to live and learn in a safe environment.
