Groups question early lease-signing dates

Michael Baumgarten knew he wanted to live off campus, but he struggled to find roommates in time to sign a lease for renting an East Lansing house.

“I had a problem when I was a freshman because I hadn’t really met anyone, and a lot of my other friends ended up living in a house together,” said Baumgarten, a communication sophomore. “It was hard for me to figure out where I was going to live because they do it so early.”

MSU’s Residence Halls Association, or RHA, discussed a bill during its meeting Wednesday that would send RHA’s president to relay student concerns about early lease signing dates to East Lansing’s University Student Commission.

Brian Wlosinski, RHA’s Holmes Hall representative, who introduced the bill, said early lease signing dates have been a concern representatives frequently hear from students.

“Ultimately, some people can’t get the experience of what on-campus living is and whether they want to stay on or move off,” Wlosinski said.

ASMSU Student Assembly passed a bill to ask the East Lansing City Council to consider pushing the beginning lease signing date to Jan. 1 during its meeting last week.

ASMSU is MSU’s undergraduate student government.

Michael Leahy, Student Assembly chairperson, said pushing leasing dates back would give students, especially freshmen, time to find the right room and roommates.

“When I moved into my apartment, I was pretty much asked a week and a half later if I was going to sign (for next year),” Leahy said. “A lot of these high-pressure tactics East Lansing landlords use against students are very much not in the students’ best interest.”

East Lansing City Councilmember Nathan Triplett said the issue of lease signing dates has come up numerous times with East Lansing’s University Student Commission, and the city is in the very early stages of assessing how to resolve the concerns.

Triplett said he has considered ordinances in Ann Arbor and Madison, Wis., that ban landlords from showing or agreeing to rent leased property for a specified period of time within the current tenant’s lease.

“There are lots of other options out there,” Triplett said. “We want to find the best solution for East Lansing and not necessarily copy what another community has done.”

Matt Hagan, an agent at Hagan Realty, said lease signing dates are driven by the market, and the company wouldn’t sign leases in early fall if the demand wasn’t there.

“Our phones start ringing in late September or early October for people looking for places to live,” Hagan said. “People rent in the areas surrounding East Lansing. If you put restrictions on businesses in East Lansing, that would put them at a competitive disadvantage.”

Published on Wednesday, March 26, 2008