Students learn their rights before renting

Nathan Palcowski
Staff Reporter

While the Western Michigan University dorms are a great way to interact and meet fellow WMU students, students are typcally looking to one day rent their own apartment  Though being away from the campus and having more freedom is a good thing, there are still many rules to follow when renting an apartment.

As with Fall Welcome Week and Orientation, rules for the dorms are talked about, passed out on flyers and discussed over a week period.  But when deciding to rent an apartment, only the basic rules are covered.

“Many new renter’s don’t really know all of there rights until something happens,” said Josh Lauka, a lawyer at Willis Law in Kalamazoo.

With owning an apartment, the basic rules are ones that every renter lives by. These include rules regarding kicking out a roommate, terminating your lease and when to involve the authorities.

“If you feel like you have been treated unfairly, or discriminated against, that’s when lawyers and authorities need to step in,” Lauka said.

According to the Housing Code of the City of Kalamazoo Chapter 17, the landlord has to be able to maintain a safe and functional environment for the apartment owners.  So if a student has a problem and feels that the landlord is not doing his/her job, that’s when renter’s rights come into play.

“We keep our facilities up to date and if there is a problem, we fix it,” Molly Win said, a manager at The Pointe Apartments.

With the landlord keeping the apartment safe and functional, the owners of the apartment have that obligation as well.  Another problem that renters might run into is sub-leasing agreements, which involves two people splitting the rent and leasing the apartment. The common problem is that if one person leaves, the other has to pay the full rent.  This, however, is easily solvable.

“As long as you get the sub-tenants to sign a written agreement with the landlord, and require a security deposit from the sub-tenants, then you will not have to pay in full,” said Timothy Stark said, freshman at the office of Division of Student Affairs.

Arguments are bound to happen when leasing an apartment with another student.  Kicking out a roommate is easier said than done, however.

“You need to have a legitimate reason for why the roommate is getting kicked out,” Lauka said.  “So if something does happen, don’t wait and call the court right away, to figure out what needs to be done.”

And as some WMU students have found out, kicking out a roommate is a long and arduous process.

“I kicked my roommate out last month,” said Lauren Talbot, a WMU junior majoring in theatre.  “But than we had to go through a long process, so make sure that kicking your roommate out is the right decision.”

These are only the few basic rules that renters deal with everyday. There are many more rights that renters have and don’t know about.  To learn more about your rights as a renter visit tenant.net/Other_Areas/Michigan.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=29543

Posted by njstrehl on Feb 13 2012. Filed under Housing Guide, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Nora Strehl