Honestly I don’t think so, at least not until they have a problem, then they care. But that’s too late. That seems to be the way they are approaching funding for tenant services as well.
OLDER BACKGROUND
The Student Tenant Union and the Madison Tenant Union formed in the late 1960s. In 1980, the Madison Tenant Union kind of folded and the Tenant Resource Center emerged as a non-profit that could access other sources of funding. In 1995, folks connected to the University thought that because of the duplication of services it would be better for the Student Tenant Union and Tenant Resource Center to merge. The Tenant Resource Center staff and volunteers were frustrated with the Student Tenant Union because they took too long to get back to people, were giving out bad information, weren’t open during their advertised hours, etc. etc. So, we “merged” and started getting money through SSFC. Things went fine for 7 or 8 years . . . and then . . .
THE BEGINNING OF THE END BACKGROUND
I don’t know what happened, but there was a definite attitude change. The Roman Catholic Foundation issues happened, administration was getting tougher on SSFC and SSFC rules kept changing. At first we only needed student employees, which made sense. Then we needed students on our board, then we needed a student advisory board that controlled the entire budget from the University. It was hard to figure out what they wanted and why and when the rules were changing. We had several years where we went through appeals until we were finally determined to be ineligible because we needed to be 100% student run. In effect, they wanted our entire board to be students as well as all our staff or we couldn’t pay administrative support of supervisory staff. Not. Realistic. At one point we even had to appeal over a typo – we had a group Students for the Tenant Resource Center, but we put Tenant Resource Center on the application. So, anyways, we spent time and money to form the Student Tenant Union, to help form a student group on campus. The students got funding completely separate from us, but people graduated and moved on . . . and no one was there to run the organization. Some students stepped up, Tenant Resource Center did training and provided materials for them, but never got paid for our services despite that it was part of what SSFC agreed to fund. For me, that added insult to injury after all our efforts to help student renters. I think the students had the organization up and running for a while, but then, . . . things just didn’t go smoothly, to say the least. At one point, I attempted to contact the administration to talk to them about services for students, but I got blown off by the Chancellor (Martin, not Wiley) and Dean of Students.
9/23/08 – Dear Ms. Martin and Ms. Berquam –
My name is Brenda Konkel and I’m the Executive Director of the Tenant Resource Center (and on the City Council). As you may (or might not) know, the Tenant Resource Center lost funding from SSFC because we are not a student organization. We attempted to set up a student organization to serve students in the area of Tenant’s Rights and it is going very, very slowly. I was wondering if you might be interested in sitting down and talking about the current status of tenants on campus and how we can assure that they are getting the services that they need.
Brenda9/25/08 – Dear Brenda,
Thank you for your email. I know the Chancellor is out of town and as such we have been unable to put our heads together on your request. We have a meeting next Tuesday where this can be discussed. I should be able to respond shortly thereafter.
Let me know if you have additional questions prior to that time.
Take care. lb
And then nothing . . .
And no response to this:
9/29/09 – A year later . . . it still sucks . . . even worse . . .
http://brendakonkel.blogspot.com/2009/09/uw-sucks-at-supporting-off-campus.html
At that point, I also sent it to Dawn Crim (Chancellor’s Office, Community Relations) and got this as a response:
10/1/09 – Brenda,
Thank you for the update.
Dawn
And now, there is no funding for tenant services, or there won’t be.
NEWER BACKROUND
I’ll let others pick up the story from there and explain what is going on:
ASM Funding (Website, STU & STRC, ASM Funding)
This is the most comprehensive most recent look at what’s going on. Lots of links.
– Erik Paulson
Rate My Landlord Website
– Sconz on website.
– Sconz update on website
THE DEBATE
The Cardinal recently ran a pro and con piece on services for tenants. Fortunately, both were complimentary to the Tenant Resource Center, much appreciated folks!
WHAT CAN THE TENANT RESOURCE CENTER DO FOR STUDENTS?
– You can call us Monday – Friday at 257-0006 and we’ll try to help answer your questions.
– You can stop by our offices at 1202 Williamson St, Suite A (or 102) Monday – Friday 9 – 6 and we’ll have someone help you face to face.
– You can email us at asktrc@tenantresourcecenter.org and someone will get back to you within 48 hours or so.
– Visit our website for background information.
WHAT CAN’T THE TENANT RESOURCE CENTER DO FOR STUDENTS?
– Provide on-campus walk-in services
– Do dozens of dorm presentations
– Provide the student renter’s guide
– Do the campus outreach and education to let people know about our services (no ads in student papers, no chalking, no posters, etc etc etc)
– No Tenant Education Week
– No columns in the student newspapers
These are all services we did provide in the past.
THE SOLUTION
That’s up to the students to figure out, but I think they are doing their fellow students a huge disservice while they diddle around. Comprehensive, year-round, 45 hours/week services for tenants ended 3 or 4 years ago. It used to be that 20 – 25% of the people we serve at the Tenant Resource Center were students, but that number has dropped over the last few years. It might even be as low as 12% at this point. Meanwhile . . . well, if you’ve been a renter in Madison, you can fill in the blanks. We hear thousands of stories every year and help thousands of people resolve their problems, its just less and less students each year. And, if the city funding process goes the way I think it might, we might be restricted from serving students altogether and we are asked to focus on low-income populations.
