Ok – I’m going to rant.
The UW SUCKS! at supporting UW student tenants who live off campus. This should be a fundamental service provided by the UW. I don’t care if they contract with the Tenant Resource Center, or work with a student organization or do the damn work themselves. It just needs to be freaking done!! Arghh!! I’m beyond frustrated after 19 years!!
Here’s a little history. First, my history with how I got involved. I came to Madison in 1990 for law school. It was a bit of a last minute change, I was on my way to Toledo Ohio to be a Resident Director and get a Master in Public Administration and Government Affairs or something like that, when I learned at the last minute that I had been accepted to UW-Madison Law School. So, I hastily rented my first apartment. And of course, ran into trouble! Luckily, I also happened to run into Holly at the Law School, who was the volunteer coordinator at the Tenant Resource Center and she told me how I could resolve my issues . . . and then recruited me to volunteer at the Tenant Resource Center. I had previously been volunteering at whatever they called the legal resource center on campus and it was horrible. They basically showed us a stack of books and told us to answer the phone – no training, just 6 months of law school – not even enough to be dangerous, just completely ineffective.
Anyways, after Holly convinced me, I started volunteering at the Tenant Resource Center, I didn’t even know a Student Tenant Union existed at the time. It had existed since 1969. The Tenant Resource Center started in 1980. The first time I became aware of a Student Tenant Union (STU) was when people started complaining to the Tenant Resource Center about STU not being open when they said they were or giving them wrong information. And that is when I began to think that as bad as the Tenant Resource Center was at the time, it was better than the Student Tenant Union. (TRC had poor materials and training and supervision for the volunteers, a grumpy scary Executive Director who kept her door shut most of the time, and also had trouble being open when they said they were going to be.)
I eventually became the volunteer coordinator myself, graduated from Law School, served on the board of directors, fired the Executive Director, hired and let go another Executive Director and finally just did it myself . . . temporarily . . . for a few years . . . er . . . since 1995. Since then we added a mediation program, started the Housing Help Desk, do a weekly housing list, provide services in Spanish, have a statewide toll-free number (1-877-238-RENT), provide eviction prevention dollars, do statewide trainings, substantially revised our Apartment Management in Wisconsin Book, developed our brochures series and website and so much more. All, without enough money to get it done properly, but with the help of many, many, many volunteers in the community and from campus.
Meanwhile, the services the campus provides, are back to freaking zero. From 1995 to about 2005, Tenant Resource Center received funding for services on campus. We did tabling, a Tenant Education Week, did a column in the Badger Herald when they let us, had a Student Renter’s Guide and did what outreach we could to students to let them know that we existed and could help. Then, the UW started cracking down, at first we just had to have three students on our board of directors and that was ok. Then, we had to be 100% student run and we lost our funding. There were no services for a year. Then the Tenant Resource Center spent our own money to pay staff to help set up a student organization, I spent my own money to take a class so I could be a student to help get the funding and we got the newest version of the Student Tenant Union up and running with a $75,000 budget, which was much more than the Tenant Resource Center ever got! But we had trouble getting students to run it. (They tend to graduate and move away and have finals and go on break and . . . ) Finally Kyle and others picked up and ran with it, but by the time they were involved and up and running, the budget was greatly reduced. We trained them and they seemed to be doing ok . . . then I kind of lost track of what happened, as I wasn’t a student and couldn’t be involved and there apparently was no way for them to pay us for training, materials and consultation (which we ended up doing for free). And now, it seems, we’re back to nothing. NOTHING! It’s so damn frustrating.
I’m getting really irritated by this. There are 10’s of thousands of UW students renting off campus that need these services. To not have them borders on criminal if you’ve seen some of the places they are renting. And I blame it directly on the administration. There has to be a way to get these services to students. And they need to be student focused services. Students are welcome to come to the Tenant Resource Center or email or call and we’ll serve them. But we don’t have funds to do the outreach necessary, and the education necessary, on campus (well, or for the rest of the city or county – state we’ve got for the first time since 1994, til next December). I think the UW administration and student government need to get their shit together and figure this out. There has to be a way to fund competent tenant services for students that go beyond a worst house on campus contest or what whatever happened to ratemylandlord.com?
End rant. Begin working to make something happen? Or is it a lost cause, and how much more should the TRC put into this without any support from the UW?
