"Page 4-Friday, September 9, 1977-The Michigan Daily Eighty-Eiglit Years o 420 Maynard St., Ar Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 2 a, Edited and managed by student It's good to b4 NN ARBOR is an easy town to take fo rgranted. After spending a few years here, one becomes an expert at moaning about everything from obscene rents and as- tronomical tuition rates to the condition of the streets and the dearth of parking spaces. And yet, we all return each fall, drawn like lemmings to this city. The fact is, deep-down, we all love this Vlace, and after a summer in the real world, it's a relief to return to our cozy ,:little pseudoreality: * Where you can dress and act any RKway you choose since there's always :.someone much weirder than you just =o around the corner. S*Where you can see 50 different :-movies a week, (quite a relief after a summer diet of Monkey and the Bandit ':,nd Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo), and jnost of them at a cost of only $1.50. " Where you can come home from a ,tough day and turn the stereo, on just as' =loud as you like without any complaints :'from the elderly couple next door. *Where you can always find someone *o talk to who is an expert in whatever ,new subject in which you've suddenly, developed an interest. * Where you can join a group or or- .ganization that shares your values, - whether your goal is to burn the Admin- istration Building, and depose Robben Fleming, or to crusade for psychoan- f Editorial F nn Arbor, MI 481C reedom 09 News Phone: 764-0552 Welcome to Ann Arbor ts c 'the University of Michigan e back home alytic counseling for plants. * Where you can wait in line on Sun- day mornings for omlettes at Steve's Lunch, and you know they'll be better than Mom used to make. " Where you can play pinball until 3 a.m. and not be alone. " Where you can smoke and drink yourself into oblivion and have no one to answer to the next morning but yourself. * Where you can sit in a booth from your parents' era, eating Drake's famed toasted pecan rolls and sipping darjee- ling tea. * Where a man named Shakey Jake will sing you a song if you buy a paper from him and jeer and hiss at you if you dare to pass him by. * And where you can watch top-ranked football and basketball and hockey teams, eat fragels from the Bagel Fac- tory, buy hardback books at discount from Borders', devour all-natural ice cream at Mountain High, eat the best crab you've ever tasted and not pay an arm and a claw for it at the appropriate- ly named Cracked Crab, where you can buy every comic book ever made at the Eye of Aggamotto, and read one of the nation's finest college newspapers de- livered to your home each morning for a paltry $12 a year (sorry about that). Gee, ain't it good to be back home again? TT'S SEPTEMBER, and after that wonderful summer vacation you're ready to come back to Ann Arbor for the ;annual autumn frolic, the first day of school. You're smiling, youruggage is 1i the back of the car, your parents are feeling a glow in their hearts for you, their College Student; and you ponder thoughts of days that you'll remember Ul your life. Then you hit town. 19 And you discover that it took you less :time to drive from Cleveland to Ann Ar- bor than from Washtenaw to Geddes. You discover that the city of Ann Ar- bor, in all its wisdom, has seen fit during the summer to widen the street and you've been widened right out of a parking space. - . You learn that two of your professors have died, one'was denied tenure and left town, and the other's department was dismantled; you have no courses left and must re-register through CRISP. Do not pass Go. e You find that the money you made as a bank teller during the summer buys a lot less, even from the People's Food Co- op, than you expected, and you're going to eat a lot of Tube Steaks au Celery this year. YOU CAN'T call your friends because ..LMa Bell won't install until October, the Student Directory doesn't come out until December, and the phone book won't be published until April. And the Student Locator's phone is always off the hook. You find there's less to do at night sin- ce the film co-ops have started their stampede to bankruptcy; but it doesn't IT ONLY HRTS I ris it? matter, you wouldn't go out anyway, rapes and assaults of all kinds are up 355'. * And if'that wasn't enough, you go to Olga's for some well-earned solace and find that their souvlaki is cold and the sauce is served from a squeeze bottle. Welcome back, Kotter. and the By STEPHEN HERSH If you're like most students at the Uni- versity, you've just moved into your new house or apartment for the coming school year, and you're not too happy with it. It took you a lot of trouble to find it when you went home-hunting last year. And you're paying more rent for it than it seems to be worth. And it has its share of shortcomings as a home. And after spending the past couple of days in your new palace, you may feel that putting your John Hancock on the lease wasn't the smartest thing you've ever done. If this sounds like your situation, welcome to the Ann Arbor housing crisis. Don't despair - do something to keep your situation as a tenant from getting any worse than it already is. You should get familiar with your rights, and you should know how you can legally defend your rightskagainst a landlord who may try to violate them. FIRST OFF, you should know that your landlord is required by law to give you a free copy of the tenants' rights booklet published by the city government. Your landlord is also obligated to include a clause in your lease in- forming you of his obligation to offer you a copy of the booklet. If you don't have a copy, you can ask your landlord to get you one, or you canpick one up yourself by going to the second floor of City Hall. You may be in- terested to know that your landlord can be fined $500 for not offering you the booklet, and you can report him or her by calling the city prosecutor at 994-2380. For a more detailed description of tenants' rights than the city's booklet offers, you can purchase the book How to Evict Your Lan- dlord, which is on sale at local book stores. One of the more common ways in which landlords infringe upon tenants' rights, is by demandinglarger security deposits than they are allowed by law to collect. The total se- curity deposit cannot be larger than one and one-half times a month's rent. If you paid the last month's rent in advance, that amount is legally part of the seurity deposit. If your total security deposit is more than the land- lord is permitted to require, you may deduct the excess from the first month's rent you pay. You can call Campus Legal Aid, at 763- 9920, for advice on doing this. WHEN YOU MOVED in to your new place, the landlord should have given you a damage inventory list, so that you can make a record of what things in your home were damaged' before you moved in. Keeping such a record protects you from the possibility of the land- lord holding you responsible for damage done before you arrived. If you haven't filed a rec- ord of the damage done before you arrived. If you haven't filed a record of the damages in your new home, you should do so as soon as possible. As a tenant, you have a right to a dwelling that meets the minimum health and safety standards established by law in the city and state housing codes. If your home violates the housing codes in any way, your landlord has an obligation to do any work necessary to bring the place into conformity with the code. A list of housing code requirements is in- cluded in How to Evict Your Landlord. Some of the requirements are:. " dwellings must be in good repair; " floors, ceilings and roofs must be rea- sonably water-tight; " heating facilities must be capable of heating dwellings to 70 degrees when the out- side temperature is as low as 10 degrees be- low zero (this applies to all rooms except laundries, pantries, foyers, corridors, closets and storage spaces ; * every plumbing fixture must work free of leaks and defects; and " walls, floors and ceilings must be capable of affording privacy by being reasonably soundproof. If your home has any code violations which your landlord won't attend to, you have the right to withhold your rent until the necessary repairs are made. For information on withholding rent, call Campus Legal Aid, or telephone the Ann Arbor Tenants Union (TU at 761-1225. Incidentally, about 90 per cent of the student off-campus housing in the city has some sort of housing code violation. IT IS OFTEN SAID that the housing situa- tion in Ann Arbor is a crisis. Is that fair to say? Judge for yourself, considering the fac- ts. The city's median rent is 72 per cent higher than the national median, according to the U.S. Census. And the Department of Housing -m Prv'oA) F4','oA4- and Urban Development says a healthy hous- ing market requires that five to seven per cent of the rental units in a community be va- cant at any given time, so that tenants have an adequate supply to choose from. But Ann Arbor doesn't even come close to having five per cent vacancies; the local vacancy rate is 0.7 per cent. The reasons for the crisis are complex. One of the more crucial factors is simply the shortage of housing. Because of the shortage, tenants are often forced to crowd into existing buildings, and they have to race to find a place to rent at all. And because people are beating down the landlord' doors to rent whatever they can get, the landlords don't have to offer good deals - they can steadily jack up the rents and still be assured of find- ing customers. For the same reason they don't. have to offer good services to their tenants. A management company with a reputation for poor maintenance won't lose business because of its reputation. There is so little available housing in the city that most people don't have much choice in deciding from whom they'll rent. The University does its share in contribu- ting to thethousing shortage. About half the tenants in town are students, and the Univer- sity's enrollment has been increasing regularly in recent years. But no new dor- mitories have been built since 1968, and no new married student housing has been built since 1972. There aren't enough dorm rooms to go around, so the. University uses the "dorm lottery" system to decide which students get what rooms there are, and which are forced to enter the dog-eat-dog private housing market. Clearly, the University ought to build more student housing, both to accommodate those students who want to live in University housing, and to take some of the pressure off the tight housing market. RENT INFLATION is perhaps the housing problem which hurts tenants most. The par- ticularly high rate of rent inflation in Ann Ar- bor is one of the signs that thescity's housing market is a bad system. As the housing market is set up, constant rent increases are almost inevitable. The largest property rental companies in the city buy and sell their build- ings like speculators. They'll buy a building at the going price, and ther sell the building some years later at a much higher price. While they owned the building, they used it as a tax shelter, saving themselves lots of money at the taxpayer's expense. Since they earn a large profit on the sale of ithe building, they almost force thesjw buyer to raise the rents, because the new buyer, who's paying a higher price for the building,ewill have to make higher monthly mortgage payments. The tenant and the tax- payer give the landlord his profit, and the landlord comes out on top. The system is de- signed to generate profits, not to supply good housing.-The profits do get generated, but the secondary goal of providing good housing never gets achieved. Local tenants who want to want to improve their position in the housing tangle should join TU. TU has done much useful work in recent years in helping tenants to exert their rights - the union has helped to keep tenants infor- med by providing over-the-telephone counsel- ing for tenants having disputes with their landlords, and has organized mass rent strikes, rallying tenants with common grievances to fight their problems collective- ly. To continue in its work, and to show the community that local tenants are still serious about wanting a fair housing system, the TU needs new members annually. People who live in dorms as well as tenants in privately- owned housing should feel welcome to join the TU; alter all, dorm residents are tenants, too - their landlord is the University. And most dorm residents will leave the dorms before they graduate. Anyone interested in joining the TU should call its office or attend the meeting on Sept.12 at 8p.m. in the Union. ANOTHER LOCAL pro-tenant group is the Michigan Student Assembly Housing Law Re- form Project, which works together with the TU. The Project is the publisher of How to Evict Your Landlord, and is theproducer of a video program on the city's housing problem entitled, "It Just Ain't Right: The Ann Arbor Housing Crisis." The program is regularly shown free in dorms and around the commu- nity, accompanied by lecture and discussion sessions about tenants' rights. In addition to its community education work, the Project employs housing attorneys to analyze infor- mation on the local housing situation collec- ted by the U.S. Census and the University's Institute for Social Research (IRS-, publicizing pertinent aspects of the data and using them to aid in the design of proposals to east the local housing crisis. If you're a student at the University and you don't earn a high income, you can get legal help in landlord-tenant matters from Campus Legal Aid. Remember, as a tenant in Ann Arbor, you're paying top dollar for housing, and you're entitled to a decent place to live. Tenants all around the city are fighting for their rights through the TV and Legal Aid. If you feel you're not getting your due as a ten- ant, join with them to protect your rights. And you can help fund the TU and the MSA Housing Law Reform Project by opting to pay the voluntary MSA fee, which you can do by checking off the appropriate box on the card enclosed with your-tuition bill. Stephen Hersh is a former Daily editor who now works for the MSA Housing Law Reform Project. This is the first of his weekly Friday columns on tenants. housing crisis EDITORIAL STAFF ANN MARIE LIPINSKI Editors-in-.Chief JIM TOBIN, KEN PARSIGIAN.............. ....... Editorial Director LOIS JOSIMOVICH........ ............... ........ Art Editor JAY LEVIN..................................Managing Editor GEORGE LOBSENZ....... ............ Managing Editor MIKE NORTON ........................... Managing Editor MARGARET YAO..................... Managing Editor SUSAN ADES g ELAINE FLETCHER Magazine Editors weather Forecasters MARK ANDREWS and MIKE GILFORD STAFF WRITERS: Gwen Barr, Susan Barry, Brian Blanchard, Michael Beckman, Phillip Bokovoy, Linda Brenners, Lori Car- ruthers, Ken Chotiner, Eileen Daley, Ron DeKett, Lisa Fisher, David Goodman, Marnie Heyn, Robb Helmes, Michael Jones, Lani Jordan, Janet Klein, Gregg Kruppa, Steve Kursman, Dobilas Matunonis, Stu McConnell, Tom Meyer, Jenny Miller, Patti Montemurri, Tom O'Connell, Jon Pansius, Karen Paul, Stephen Pickover, Kim Potter, Martha Retallick, Keith Rich- burg, Bob Rosenbaum, Dennis Sabo, Annmarie Schiavi, Eliza- beth Slowik, Tom Stevens, Jim Stimpson, Mike Taylor, Pauline Toole, Mark wagner, Sue warner, Shelley Wolson, Mike Yellin, Laurie Young and Barb Zahs. SPORTS STAFF KATHY HENNEGHAN ....................,...,.....Sports Editor TOM CAMERON ....................... Executive Sports Editor SCOTT LEWIS........ ...........Managing Sports Editor DON MacLACHLAN.................. Associate Sports Editor Contributing Editors JOHN NIEMEYER and ENID GOLDMAN NIGHT EDITORS: Ernie Dunbar, Henry Engelhardt, Rick Mad- dock, Bob Miller, Patrick Rode, Cub Schwartz. ASST. NIGHT EDITORS: Jeff Frank, Cindy Gatziolis, Mike Hal pin, Brian Martin, Brian 'Miller, Dave Renbarger, .Errol. Shifman and Jamie Turner PHOTOGRAPHY STAFF The Gripes of Wrath To The Daily: Last May the Kent State rally Board of Trustees at Kent ALAN BILINSKY ANDY FREEBERG Co-Photographers-in-Chief BRAD BENJAMIN.. ........................ Staff Photographer JOHN KNOX :.T.NA..... Staff Photographer CHRISTINA SCHNEIDER .......... Staff Photographer State University (KSU in Ohio announced plans to construct a gym on the site where four students were murdered on May 4, 1970. Since that time, KSU has been rocked by dem- onstrations, picket lines, court injunctions, massive arrests and a 62-day occupation of the site of the murders. Thousands of students at Kent and around the country have put the KSU administration on notice that their ef- forts to wipe out the memory of May 4 by building on the'site will not be tolerated. Nowhere in their worst dreams -had the authorities thought the battle to halt construc- tion of the gym would grow so strong and last so long. Ministers, lawyers, ex-guardsmen and parents of the slain and wounded students have joined in to say MOVE THE GYM! A lot more is at stake here than the economics of where to build the gym. This summer the Kent trustees, state and national courts, and police have pushed hard to try to stop this fight - arresting more than 300 and setting bonds of up to $6,000. Even President Carter got into the act - sending bonds of up to $6,000. Even President Carter got into the act - sending a message that he hoped things wouldn't get "out of hand." The KSU administration and trustees say the gym must be built, because if the students win it will go to their heads. As KSU vice-pres- ident Sneider put it: 'The issue is, who runs 7W Ov ar Moo Wtrau0!ft", PcoAM l lv M- PAeF ,.m09i ,PeAr MWW this university. If the gym is moved by mold rule, then you can expect more protests in the fall.' The fight at Kent today is 'dangerous' to those who rule this country in the same way the protests at Kent and Jackson State werO 'dangerous' in 1970 - people are standing up to injustice and getting organized to do some- thing about it. We have a real opportunity, now that stu- dents are returning to campuses all over, to stop construction once and for all. Rally today on Regents Plaza at 12:00 noon (by the cube: to bring the fight to Ann Arbor Sunday, Sept 11 students will leave Ann Arbor from in front of the Union at 7:00 a.m. to go to a rally in Kent. Come with us to see what's been going on! Thursday, Sept. 15 at 7:30 in the Inter national Center the Revolutionary Studen Brigade (RSB is sponsoring a program to' talk about what has been happening at Kent: how it fits into building a revolutionary stun: dent movement, and other issues such as th- fight against the Bakke case and in support of: liberation in South Africa. These actions ard- all building for a big national rally September' 24 in Kent - bringing busloads from cam- puses all over to stop construction. Join us I Long live the spirit of Kent and Jackson; State! Move the gym! Gail Summerfield;' Revolutionary Student Brigades 00, 1TRW~ AFR W (FTHJAR. .pawn f , WAL)CA. OMEN Y GRIN ... LAANq -I .,I i, LOV, 1.I! 1IL-f A Al --".. " \