Landlords price out UW students

by Laura Brennan

Monday, October 29, 2007 00:00

As the all-too-familiar date of Nov. 15 approaches, I find myself dreading the imminent apartment hunt.

After tirelessly searching for an apartment with a six-month lease term and coming up with more garbage than a back-alley dumpster, I was elated to finally ensure a roof over my head. While all my friends were signing leases last November, I was filling out applications for a semester in London, and a place to live nine months later was the last thing on my mind.

As it turns out, 6-month leases don’t come by easily. I discovered one hidden in a corner somewhere near Johnson Street, shared with a stranger and attempting to pass off an 8x8 "den" as a bedroom. Another was so dilapidated it could have been mistaken as condemned. Yet, each of these landlords was asking upwards of $400 per month for rent. Something is wrong with this picture.

With little of my sanity intact, I stumbled upon a little gem right by the lake about two months before I had to move out of my apartment. It took seven months of searching, but I had quite possibly found the only decent landlord in the city of Madison. He was not only willing to let me sign a six-month lease, but is a responsible, respectable and honest proprietor that takes care of his tenants.

After happily turning in my first $500 rent check, I had to stop and ask myself — am I crazy?

Don’t get me wrong — a good landlord is priceless and if I need to pay a little extra to ensure that my dishwasher doesn’t flood my kitchen every week, I’ll do what I need to do. But is it realistic for students — many buried in loans — to be paying average prices of $400, $500 or even $600 or more per month?

I was curious as to what students were paying at other schools, either similar in size or location. Ohio State University, another Big Ten school located in Ohio’s state capital of Columbus is a good place to start. With a population of nearly 700,000, Columbus is a larger city than Madison, yet is similar to Madison in that it boasts the university as a central part of its vitality.

A friend of mine who attends Ohio State estimated that the average price a student will pay for his or her own bedroom in a decent apartment is between $325 and $350. This price usually doesn’t include utilities as many of Madison’s apartments also exclude, yet the price seems much more reasonable for a student budget. How is this possible, when I was paying $465 per month for a thin-walled, dirty and cheap apartment through a vile and dishonest rental company?

I was surprised to hear that friend at Dayton University pays $525 per month — until he added that he lives in a five-bedroom house with a backyard, a finished basement and a garage. All of his utilities are paid, except for cable. Oh — and his landlord bought them a ping-pong table. Seriously?

Dayton University is a smaller school than the University of Wisconsin, with an enrollment of 11,000, but Dayton is a medium-sized city similar to Madison with a population close to 160,000. Why can’t Madison’s landlords take a page out of Dayton’s book?

The problem isn’t availability. A recent surge in development has added many new apartment buildings in the campus area, and has actually led to a high vacancy rate. Although vacancy rates reported by MG&E have been on the decline since an all-time high of 7.03 percent in 2005 for the Madison area, they are still too high. The current vacancy rate for the 53703 zip code is 2.41 percent. This number might seem small, but it leaves 247 units vacant in the most populated part of the city, where many students look for housing.

Unfortunately, adding more housing doesn’t always make it more affordable. The new apartment complex being built in the old University Square area — Lucky — has rental rates rivaling those of penthouse suites next to the Capitol.

So, why must rent be so outrageously high, especially with so many vacant units? Why must students bankrupt themselves for sub-par housing and incompetent landlords? It clearly isn’t Madison’s status as the state’s capital — Columbus, Ohio, has disproved that university housing in a capital city doesn’t have to break the bank.

Madison has made great strides in offering more housing to students, yet prices are still exorbitantly high. Instead of a trade-off between a decent landlord and a decent price, students should be given reasonable and realistic prices within their budgets through honest rental companies. This is not only a matter of a need for stricter regulations on shoddy landlord procedures, but also for students to speak out and stand up for their rights as renters. Students shouldn’t be treated as high-turnover commodities, yet I have a feeling most landlords would disagree.

Laura Brennan (lbrennan@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in communicative disorders.