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So you're about to sign the lease for your first off-campus home.
That signature will be your key to the long-awaited freedom of living on your own, of not having to sign in your guests with the Spectaguard at the front desk and of throwing parties on the weekends without the RA down the hall yelling at you to turn down your music.
But before you scrawl your name on that dotted line, don't let the thrill of residential independence distract you from the reality that, for many students, moving off campus gives rise to a flood of unforeseen crises, ranging from leaky toilets to rodent infestations to heating bills that skyrocket because of shoddy windows.
And in some cases, your landlord will not offer much help. In fact, many students say they cause more anxiety than assistance.
So is living off campus worth the possible drawbacks? Are maintenance problems and neglectful landlords simply the standard trials and tribulations of real estate rental?
Or are Penn's off-campus options really falling apart?
When Penny* and her three friends signed a lease with a private owner for a four-bedroom house on Pine Street, they had no idea about the problems that would come with it -- mouse infestation, plumbing problems, faulty phone lines and constantly crashing DSL service, none of which their landlord would fix in what she considers a timely manner.
Penny says she thinks that the landlord did not even take their complaints seriously.
"The landlord won't even return our calls unless we get our parents to call and threaten them," she says. "It's been a really bad experience."
For a while, the girls tolerated the substandard conditions. But after a glut of maintenance disasters arose -- including their bathtub leaking through a bedroom ceiling -- the four girls got fed up with the state of their house and decided to rent a different off-campus pad for the upcoming school year.
"We're getting another house, through Campus Apartments," Penny says. "And we know a little more about the house this time."
Penny's story is probably all too familiar to many students who make the decision to move out of University dormitories for their senior, junior or even sophomore years.
Last year, about 45 percent of Penn's undergraduate students and nearly 90 percent of its graduate students lived off campus, according to the Office of Off-Campus Living. And because the cutthroat race to sign a lease begins as early as October, many students are so focused on snatching a convenient and reasonably-priced option as quickly as possible that they neglect to look into the potential drawbacks.
"Many students, especially graduate students, [decide on a property] from a distance over the Internet without seeing the apartment," OCL Director Mihaela Farcas says.
Last year, Farcas counselled 726 people, including 92 sessions to review leases before signing, 218 questions dealing with lease issues and maintenance problems, 62 complaints regarding the return of security deposits and 23 requests to take advantage of OCL's legal assistance or referral option, which became available in 1999.
"And this is just a sampling," Farcas notes.
The landlord-tenant relationship is historically a tense one, but most area landlords and tenants agree that the underlying problem with off-campus housing is that, although demand is high, the majority of neighborhood properties are old and in need of serious repair.
"There is a lot of housing in bad shape in our area, unfortunately," Farcas says. "The increase in rent has not been paralleled by a corresponding increase in improvement of property."
University Campus Housing Manager Gordon Reynolds says that UCH owns properties that date back to the 1850s, and that because it rents out about 3,300 units, they often have to delay minor repairs to focus on more urgent ones.
"If someone calls saying that they need a lightbulb changed, they're going to have to wait if someone else is having a plumbing catastrophe," Reynolds says. "We prioritize to some degree, but that's to be expected."
Farcas says that while safety problems are not much of an issue -- only six burglaries were reported to OCL last year -- maintenance-related complaints still run high, most commonly concerning infestations, leaks, lack of heat, hot water loss and fire code violations.
For College senior Sharon Sandell, who lives in a house at 40th and Sansom streets, maintenance problems have varied from the simply irritating to the outright dangerous.
Sandell's front door was missing a proper mail slot for months.
"We had to make a duct tape flap because the landlord wouldn't fix it," she says.
And one of Sandell's housemates is still waiting for a storm window in her bedroom to keep out the cold air.
"She has a sheet over one of her windows," Sandell says. "And it's not for decorative purposes."
More serious predicaments, she says, have included a carbon monoxide leak caused by a pipe that was displaced in two spots, and wood rotting underneath bathroom tiling, which even after a month-long repair, caused water seepage into the downstairs bathroom ceiling.
"I won't suggest this place to any of our underclassmen friends," Sandell says. "It's just a big health hazard."
While most students report mice and cockroaches to be the most frequent pests, Mary*, a College senior, had a more unusual rodent problem in her house on Sansom Street.
"There were squirrels living right above my room," Mary says. "There was a mysterious crack [on the ceiling] over my bed, and I just kept waiting for a squirrel to fall on my head while I was sleeping."
But when her landlord sent the exterminators, Mary says, they couldn't get to the squirrels' nest.
Many claim that problems they encounter are more common if someone rents from a landlord with a smaller clientele.
"We [as a larger realtor] restore our properties, and we spend a lot of money on it," says Reynolds. "Smaller landlords just put in drop ceilings or drywall or carpeting."
"The little landlords don't have nearly the response time we do," Reynolds adds, pointing out that UCH has a 24-hour response staff. "It's safe to assume that we have more resources to draw from."
Sandell's landlord -- who is not affiliated with any of the area's large realtors -- is usually inaccessible by phone, she says, and unpredictable with answering complaints.
"I think he's screening our calls," she says. "He's never there.
"For little things, like painting, we've just given up on asking," she added.
Some students claim that safety and privacy can also become concerns if a tenant rents from a private owner.
Sandell says that her landlord gave keys to a number of people without her knowing it.
"I've gone downstairs and found a stranger using our bathroom," Sandell says. "That sort of stuff happens all the time."
Nevertheless, many tenants renting from larger realtors have dealt with their fair share of disasters, as well.
"Signing a lease with UCH is like signing a lease with the devil," says James*, a Wharton senior who is renting a house on Spruce Street. "You have to call repeatedly to get any maintenance done."
James says that two weeks passed before UCH sent a plumber to fix a sewage pipe in his basement.
"The floor was covered with raw sewage, toilet paper and all kinds of other stuff," James says, claiming he called UCH "at least three times" to fix the pipe. "I threatened to call health services, and [UCH] told me not to blow it out of proportion."
Reynolds disputes this claim, however, and says that UCH would not allow such a dangerous dilemma to remain unsolved.
"How could I not respond to that? That's insanity," Reynolds says. "That's a health code violation. That would definitely qualify as an emergency.
"I have two full-time plumbers on staff, and outside contractors I would call if they were busy," he adds.
Cathy Holland, a foster care social worker who graduated from the College last year, lived as a senior in the same house as James does, and told of an even more unsettling experience.
When Holland received her $750 heating bill for the month of December, she knew something was wrong. And when she and her housemates starting smelling fumes and getting headaches, she says, they called UCH.
UCH sent a repairman who reported that nothing was wrong, Holland says. So she called the gas company, which soon discovered that the heater had rusted and corroded and was releasing harmful levels of gas into the house.
But Reynolds says that if tenants continue to notice problems, they only need to contact UCH again.
"If I sent someone and they took a look at the heater and believed there was nothing wrong with it, it could be a common mistake," Reynolds says. "These things happen. If [the tenant] still believed there was a problem, I'd send another guy over."
He admits that neighborhood properties may not be as luxurious as what some Penn students expect, but says that UCH will "go above and beyond the call of duty" to try to meet their tenants' requests.
But Farcas believes that some landlords are slow to respond to complaints simply because a decline in business is a nonexistent threat.
"In this very tight housing market, landlords feel they don't have to be on their toes for their tenants," Farcas says. "Our landlord survey indicates that many are responsible and helpful, but a large number need to be nudged."
But even with a reasonable and responsive landlord, dilemmas can still arise and escalate. One potential for disaster that most students do not consider when they decide to move off campus is that of unreliable and untrustworthy housemates.
"My roommate started selling coke out of our house," Mary says, explaining that she felt her safety was at stake after answering some alarming phone calls, and that she is now staying at various friends' houses this semester. "So now I'm homeless."
Even after surviving off-campus nightmares, however, some ultimately stay in their residences because, they say, they feel that finding alternatives is too much trouble.
"You don't feel like moving your stuff again," James says. "It's a pain."
And the factors of affordability and location are often considered more important than the drawbacks of living off campus.
Sandell decided to stick it out for a second year with the house she lived in junior year, despite her disappointment with it and with her landlord.
"It's a toss-up," Sandell says. "We're paying $200 [per month] less than our neighbors.... It was cheap, convenient and a great location."
And Farcas says that since about four years ago, landlords have stopped allowing prospective tenants to modify leases.
"It's a take-it-or-leave-it situation," Farcas says.
So what can you do to avoid living your own off-campus horror story?
Many students advise renting from larger, more reputable realtors to avoid communication as well as safety problems, and nearly all suggest talking to the tenants who live there currently.
Farcas repeatedly emphasized that the key is documentation.
"If you have a problem, put it in writing," she says.
And before you sign that lease, read it carefully. While a blatantly illegal clause on a lease can be disputed, an unfair one can still be enforced if it is agreed to in the lease, Farcas warns.
Making the leap from the college dormitory to the off-campus residence has become a rite of passage for many Penn students who are aching for a taste of the "real world" -- and in most cases, they get that taste. But in the end, students may have to decide whether living with friends and getting new freedoms is a good exchange for the potential problems of off-campus life.
Names marked with * have been changed.
