While many freshmen are excited to escape the dorms after their first year, unexpected challenges often meet those who ultimately decide to live off campus. The Daily Pennsylvanian interviewed a few Penn students to hear about some of the difficulties:
1.Tricky legal agreements
For a Wharton junior living on 41st and Walnut streets, signing an “as is” agreement seemed like a quick way to get furniture, and it allowed her roommates to move in early.
The “as is” lease meant that when she moved in, the student and her friends would keep all of the leftover furniture, but they would be responsible for cleaning any mess that was left behind.
But the student, who wished to remain anonymous so as not to upset her landlord, didn’t realize the size of the mess the previous tenants left, and that it would be up to her — not the landlord — to clean things up.
“We signed ‘as is’ so we could get the furniture, but in the end the money that we saved getting the old furniture wasn’t worth the hassle,” she said.
The student and her roommates had to rent carpet cleaners from Fresh Grocer to fix the stains left behind on her carpets, repaint the rooms and sanitize the “trashed” bathroom the previous girls left behind.
“When you sign an ‘as is’ agreement, you’re at the mercy of the old tenant,” she added.
2. Unexpected guests
When a Nursing junior living on 40th Street and Baltimore Avenue left class at 10 a.m. one morning, she saw that she had a missed call from maintenance. Calling back, she found out that maintenance found a bird in her room earlier that morning.
“I was kind of surprised because I never opened any windows in my room,” she said. “I really don’t know how it happened.”
3. Maintenance issues
Living in houses with older facilities and adjusting to the responsibilities of caring for a house are frequent struggles for off-campus students.
In the Wharton junior’s apartment, the ceiling tiles started to fall off one day — causing a leak in the kitchen.
“They are going to replace the tiles eventually,” she said, also noting they haven’t yet fixed them.
The junior added that the dishwasher also overflowed when a roommate put in the wrong soap.
Other students face similar facilities problems in their off-campus housing.
“There’s always laundry machines breaking, dishwashers breaking,” Wharton sophomore Andrea Shen, who lives in a house on 39th and Spruce streets, said. “We’ve nicknamed our toilet ‘Moaning Myrtle’ because it moans 24/7.”
4. The frats next door
For Shen, though, unwanted loud noises don’t just come from her toilet.
“One weekend, TEP had a foam party and it was completely insane,” Shen said. The party “went on for four hours — no one in the house could do work,” she added.
Loud frat parties are also a problem for the anonymous Wharton junior.
“We live next to Pi Kapp, so we hear every single party and we look right [into their house],” she said. “It’s been an interesting experience sharing that back lot with them and living through their parties.”
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