With the winter months on their way, the Tenant Resource Center is reminding students of building codes to make sure tenants stay warm as the temperature drops and actions they can take if they think their landlords are violating their right to stay warm.

“It’s a myth that there is a specific date by which a landlord must turn on the furnace or otherwise begin the heating season,” said Megin Hicks, TRC program director, in a statement. “It doesn’t matter if it’s September or November when it starts getting cold, Madison building codes require that heating facilities be able to maintain a temperature of 67 degrees at all times.”

At the same time, Madison building codes require that landlords have storm windows in place no later than Nov. 15.

“Many Madison renters also don’t realize that their landlords are responsible for supplying, installing and maintaining all storm windows to help conserve heat,” Hicks said. “In older houses, particularly downtown, walls are poorly insulated and windows are drafty. Heat-saving devices like storm windows are a necessity.”

Michael Greiber, corporate counsel for Madison Property Management, said it is not tough for the corporation to keep their rentals at 67 degrees and get storm windows in place by Nov. 15 on top of regular maintenance problems.

Some landlords, however, said they were unaware of the storm-window deadline.

“No, I haven’t had any problems with trying to keep places at 67 degrees or better,” said Bob Lund, owner and operator of Viking Properties.

Lund said he knew storm windows had to be in place, but he was unaware of the Nov. 15 deadline.

“I didn’t know there was a date or anything like that,” Lund said.

Several student tenants said they did not know about the heating laws, according to the TRC.

“If I had to speculate, I could tell you that we received hundreds of e-mails, phone calls and office visits from tenants who did not know that their landlord had to maintain a heat level of 67 degrees,” said Cynthia Campos, campus coordinator for TRC.

“I had no idea there was something that said things had to be 67 degrees,” said Eric Fischer, UW student and resident of the Embassy Apartments. “If we tell them something is wrong, they’ll usually get to it within two days,” Fischer explained.

The Tenant Resource Center recommends that students with cold housing first contact their landlords if they encounter problems like insufficient heat or a lack of storm windows. If the landlord is unresponsive, the tenant may call the Tenant Resource Center or the local building inspector, who may order the landlord to install storm windows and/or provide working heating facilities.

Inspectors may issue fines, but Campos said their allocation is subjected to the inspector’s discretion, and unless the landlords are trying deliberately to break laws, inspectors are “usually pretty lenient.”

“There’s a huge amount of landlords that are making their best effort to obey the laws,” Campos replied.

Campos suggested the problem is that many landlords do not know the laws exactly.