University of Virginia Library

Michael Russell

Charlottesville Tenants Association

Living in the dorms used to
cause emotional distress for those
unfortunate enough to be forced to
live there. Currently living
anywhere else is turning out to be
regrettable.

In the past the mean income of
students at the University was such
that rent was never a point of
controversy, and paying for an
apartment was infinitely better
than being stuck in a dormitory.
Increasing enrollment and a poorer
student body, combined with the
increasing shortage of housing has
pushed the situation beyond
tolerability.

Face it, landlords are exhorting
exorbitant tents and providing
slum housing, no service, and
writing leases that leave the tenant
without recourse to courts. With
the University able to supply
housing for less than one third of
the student body, the large
majority of students are forced to
rent from local real estate wizards;
men are making their fortunes and
retiring to the foothills of the
Blue Ridge unconcerned with what
they're leaving behind.

Charlottesville has a finite
number of available housing units.
As articles in The Cavalier Daily
pointed out last week, students are
commuting from Scottsville, Troy,
and other equally exotic and
dangerous neighborhoods. Most still
live in Charlottesville, and as the
University grows the pressure
squeeze between students—housing—and
the local community will
grow with geometric intensity.

Patterns that other Universities
have followed might prove
instructive for our consideration.
Few people remember that the
Columbia and Harvard incidents of
classic fame were involved with
housing as well as the
Military-Industrial Complex. At
Columbia the Students for a
Democratic Society claimed that
the University's expansion program
(specifically the building of a
gymnasium) was displacing poor
and working people who then were
left without housing of equal
pricing or of equal quality. The
same claim was made at Harvard.
They accused the administration of
relocating workers and poor people
in more expensive housing of lower
quality.

At the time, reporting this
wasn't gauche, so many people
never allowed it to enter their
minds that this was a part of those
great student riots.

We're now facing the same
situation, only the University is
getting away without taking any of
the responsibility. They increase
enrollment by virtue of a dubious
analysis of growth, and these fail to
insure adequate housing. The
confrontation developing here is
between students and townspeople
with the University only indirectly
responsible. As the student
population grows local people will
be displaced from their present
housing as realtors vie for the
increased rents that they can bleed
from students. The city of
Charlottesville has never shown a
particular concern for low-income
housing, preferring to allow the
Garret-Dice-Page street disgraces to
grow. Since most students have no
reasonable place to turn the
realtors will become surly and
non-concerned about how they
treat students and townspeople.

What am I saying?! The realtors
already are surly and unconcerned.
In coming weeks The Cavalier Daily
will expose some of the treatment
student leasees are encountering.
There are enough incidents among
the staff alone to curl hair.

What is the solution? I would
recommend a Tenants Association
encompassing the student body and
the townspeople. Together they
could, if they wanted, enforce some
kind of housing standard of quality,
rent index, and concomitantly,
force the University to deal with its
responsibility in providing housing
at prices students can afford.
Whatever we do, we cannot do it
separate from the local people
forced to endure substandard
housing.

The obvious goal of such an
organization is to reduce rent, and
improve the quality of the
buildings, for both students and
local people. Tactics which are
obvious and workable are to
investigate having the buildings
condemned and then refuse to pay
rent. We may find however that
Virginia has no housing code which
enforces standards on realtors. In
which case we could all apply for
University housing next year and
pressure them to solve the problem
by building a tent city on the
Lawn.

Turn Out

All of this is useless speculation
until we get together and
investigate the realities of
Charlottesville housing codes etc.
Those who are tired of paying high
rents and living in a slum might well
consider turning out when the
Union of University Students hold
their next meeting on Housing.

(There already is a Tenants
Association or at least an attempt at
one being made by the Union of
University Students. If people
would turn out for their meetings
and they would publicize them
adequately something might get
together. The UUS might find it
helpful to occasionally wander by
the CD with information of such
obvious importance. To my
knowledge their efforts have come
nowhere near the stage necessary to
intimidate realtors, mostly they've
developed a booklet on what kind
of leases not to sign and a list of the
off-ground housing and the type of
treatment one can expect from
various realtors or independent
renters.)