Three strategies for preventing student eviction
This week I’m attending the # RealCollege Convening, where I will be adding my thoughts about advising off-campus housing students (and preventing eviction) for a panel called “Creative Approaches to Affordable Student Housing.”
In his exceptional book Evicted, Matthew Desmond wrote “Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.” That is especially true for students, who are walking a tightrope to high-paying careers over a pit of potential financial catastrophe. Like many college towns, Missoula, home of the University of Montana, has high housing costs and a low vacancy rate. Therefore, landlords are selective and it is critical to prevent evictions and negative rental references, which can be devastating, especially for young adults who have limited rental history and credit history.
Based on that experience, I present a number of ideas to help students with their housing. Some of these are resources that are common to many institutions, and others are more novel. I have organized them into three general strategies.
Strategy #1: Help students understand and exercise their rights
Housing counseling is my main tactic to help students understand and exercise their rights as tenants. I provide appointments and assistance via phone and email. Many issues can be resolved if a student contacts their landlord and demonstrates that they know their rights. If the student’s case is complex or if the landlord has engaged an attorney, I refer students to ASUM Legal Services. It is a great partnership, and we are even using their database to maintain our case notes.
To scale up our services and help students more proactively, we are offering more and more renter education. We recently launched a blog on Medium, where legal interns and other guest writers have posted about topics including assistive animals, security deposits, and when landlords can enter rental units.
One particularly important area of renters’ rights is housing discrimination. Students are at risk of discrimination on the basis of their race, disability, or even just by being students.
Strategy #2: Help students pay their rent
While there are many murky areas when it comes to renters’ rights and responsibilities, one fact is absolutely certain: the rent must get paid.
To that end, we have a number of programs, including a food pantry. Kat, the pantry’s student coordinator, wrote a wonderful post about it on our blog. I recommend you read it, but want to focus on other, more “outside the box” approaches.
When I started working at UM, colleagues from Missoula’s human services sector notified me that many students were applying for emergency rental assistance. There is not enough of this assistance to go around, so we have tried to address this issue with education on two fronts: helping students understand that there might be other sources of assistance that can help them better, and helping service providers understand that students are members of our community whose needs are real.
Most of Missoula’s assistance for homeless people now goes through a Coordinated Entry System. The ASUM Renter Center’s MSW practicum student Michael is working on our application to make referrals into that system and participate in case conferencing.
As we know from the # RealCollege national report, a small percentage of students experiencing basic needs insecurity are accessing services, and the ASUM Renter Center is also working to address that issue. This year, we recruited computer science students to deploy a community resource database web app using the Open Referral Human Services Data Standard. (This may be a service your school is receiving from Single Stop or Aunt Bertha.) Find out more about this project in my blog post, or check out the ASUM Renter Center’s profile on GitHub.
Strategy #3: Help students to be good renters and neighbors
Student renters must know their rights, but not being aware of their responsibilities can also be detrimental to their housing security. The ASUM Renter Center is committed to educating UM students about how to fulfill their responsibilities as renters and as neighbors.
We host renter education events with Homeword, our local provider of home-ownership and financial fitness classes. You might have a department on campus, a local credit union, or an agency like NeighborWorks that can provide something similar.
We also employ Neighborhood Ambassadors. These are students who build positive relationships with neighbors who are impacted by aspects of campus like noisey parties and parking. They mediate disputes and promote quality of life through special events and a neighborhood newsletter.
Many colleges provide something similar under the offices of “off-campus services.”
It is important to frame this type of a program in the philosophy that it is, ultimately, about preventing evictions. These students are not the “RA’s” for students living off-campus. They are peers who coach student renters, provide resources, and advocate for students’ interests.
What other strategies could be effective?
Some of these initiatives may not prove effective, and there are doubtless many ideas we have not yet encountered. I look forward to hearing what other conference participants are working on!
Originally published at http://jordanjlyons.wordpress.com on September 23, 2019.
