“Landlords will often try to get out of paying for things like carpet cleaning, painting and other normal wear and tear,” Beyer said, adding, “It’s pretty tough to lose a case when you have pictures as evidence.”

With apartment hunting season just around the corner, students are encouraged to take advantage of the various resources available to them through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in order to make the experience of finding an apartment and signing a lease as painless as possible.

The UWM University Legal Clinic (ULC) and The UWM Neighborhood Housing Office (NHO), located respectively in rooms 357 and 363 of the Union, are resources provided to help students avoid potential nightmare living situations.

Michael Beyer, executive director of the ULC, said the most common problem his office deals with is illegal withholdings from students’ security deposits. Landlords often try to get out of paying for simple wear and tear within apartments.

Beyer suggests that after students move in, they make checklists and take pictures of anything broken our worn down.

“Landlords will often try to get out of paying for things like carpet cleaning, painting and other normal wear and tear,” Beyer said, adding, “It’s pretty tough to lose a case when you have pictures as evidence.”

Although the ULC provides free legal advice to students about everything from underage drinking tickets, traffic citations and noise violations to uncontested divorces, Beyer said that 60 percent of what the ULC deals with involves landlord/tenant issues.

One specific thing Beyer told students to look out for is “Nonstandard Rental Provisions,” or special stipulations a landlord asks tenants to initial. These are not usually included on leases and may not be legally binding.

In the event that someone unwittingly signs off on an illegal nonstandard provision, he or she cannot be penalized. “Even if you sign off on these, you’re still not liable for them,” Beyer said.

The NHO is another important resource for students looking for apartments and seeking advice on things like when the best time to rent is and what to look for when signing a lease.

NHO Coordinator Keri Duce helps organize events like the “tour of homes,” a giant open house during which property managers display open house signs on their lawns and potential tenants can take a look at the properties. The events occur June 21 and July 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Both Duce and Beyer recommended that students look into the landlords they’re dealing with by entering their names on the Consolidated Court Automation Program (CCAP), where they can find out about previous and ongoing lawsuits or any other property violations.

“Landlords do background checks on you, so you should probably do some research on them,” Duce suggested.

The NHO and ULC will also partner up to remove irresponsible landlords from the NHO Web site’s apartment listings if a complaint has been made. The landlord then has 30 days to remedy the situation.

The NHO plans to double the number of its employees and completely overhaul its Web site, in an expansion that will be in place by the fall semester of 2008. The growth comes from the fact that there are currently 10,000 students living on the upper and lower East Side. Duce considers Milwaukee an anomaly when compared to other schools due to its high supply of housing and equally high demand.

Duce said that the closer to September it is, the cheaper renting a place will be because of diminishing supply and demand. In a report compiled by the NHO, graphs indicate that rent prices peak around February and March and then slowly decline afterwards.

Another thing Duce stressed was students sticking up for themselves in situations where they feel landlords or managers are taking advantage of them. She said a lot of students aren’t aware of their rights and should bring anything questionable up to the ULC or NHO.

“Some landlords are great and some do take advantage of students,” Duce said. “You don’t have to live in a place where you’re not being treated fairly.”

> Comments