- -. IV- - . V V V V w w w_ --w- -w- -w- W-- - Locking out your landlord: An adventure in tenants rights our days before the lease on my house I didn't want coated in dust and debris) expired this summer, I lay awake in and move approximately 150 books from the middle of the night, afraid that beneath the windowsill. At the time, I was the maintenance man would overpower the teaching a creative writing workshop at the chain lock on my front door, force his way in university, transcribing medical interviews and try to repair my window. from home and doing PR and distribution This may sound absurd to a freshman for a magazine. However I looked at it, I'd reader, but to some of the upperclassmen be screwed if I wasted all that time clearing who have lived in off-campus housing before, I expect that scenarios like mine, involving dramatic and sometimes desper- ate friction in a landlord-tenant relation- Knowing your rights ship, sound more plausible. h It all started with a handwritten note my when dealing with landlord taped to my door. It told me that I was to move my belongings away from the your landlord isn't as windowsill and clear a walkway for work- men to enter and exit. The workmen, he good as knowing how informed me, could tear out my windowsill goo in my bedroom and rebuild it and that por- to bolt the door tion of the wall. I panicked. I was in the middle of moving clothing, textbooks and art supplies were heaped in piles or strewn about the room. out my apartment and then made nice with Basically, if I wanted to continue living a repairmen as they trekked in and out of my semi-normal life I was going to have to fig- bedroom replacing a windowsill that looked ure out some way around complying with fine to me. Not to mention that I'd already the instructions I had found taped to my paid my $650 rent for the month. door. ButI didn't want to make a scene. I'm non- I weighed my options. If I did comply with confrontational by nature. I once consented his wishes, Iwould have to stop packing at to dog-sitting for two months without ask- once (or pack everything up in a few nights, ing whether I would be paid. Last month I but then where to put it all?), find sheets went to a book signing where two women to drape over my desk and bed (anything cut in front of me in line, one of whom asked to borrow my pen. I never got up the nerve to ask for it back, she didn't volunteer, and I was out a pen. So it took me three days to psych myself up enough to call the 6'2", 300- pound maintenance man. In this article, I'll call him Mitch. I told Mitch I had to respectfully decline his offer to rip out my window- sill, as he was already planning to re-side the right side of my house that week. He cited a paragraph in our lease that stipu- lates landlords can enter a property to make repairs if they give the tenant 24- hour notice. But here's where I think my story might be useful to other tenants: In a last-ditch effort, I called my dad, a prac- ticing attorney in Adrian, Mich., who told me that because I was effectively being evicted from my bedroom, the repair was illegal. I don't know how many other people out there have encountered similar situations where overzealous landlords embark on invasive repairs, but I'm guess- ing I might not be alone. I called Mitch back, this time with my dad feeding me lines about "constructive evic- tion" and "stop work" orders. I thought my scholarly speeches would surely pacify him, maybe even elicit heart-felt and eloquent apologies that I would then reluctantly but graciously accept. Instead of backing down, though, Mitch got angry. He told me he wasn't a lawyer and he'd enter the property no matter what. I told him I'd lock the door. Based on my father's knowledge of the laws surrounding leases, the books were on my side, but that wasn't much comfort when he told me he had the keys. At the time, I was living alone in a three- bedroom house. So I was terrified when, after my father threatened to call the police, Mitch said he'd welcome the com- pany. Mitch had never been cordial on the phone, and it struck me that if he was hos- tile enough to force his way in through a locked door, he had the potential to become violent. He'd already showed his disdain for legal contracts and I wasn't dying to find out if he showed a similar abandon for criminal law. So I chain locked the door and waited. I spent a sleepless night thrilling at the sound of a squirrel's footfall or a leaf scraping against the driveway. The next morning, I got a call from my management company saying they were halting construction. Just like that, it was over. I was able to peacefully move out of my house, and they didn't even do the residing work. The lesson learned? If you pay your rent it's your property, so don't hesitate to chal- lenge your landlord. Just don't count on get- ting your full deposit back. -Sarah Salo is a staff reporter for The Michgan Daily. SAFETY From page 7B the Campus Safety Handbook exist- ed or that he likely sat through a DPS presentation and received a copy of the handbook at orientation. "Ican'tremember anythingabout a security presentation. Not at all," Tootla said. LSA sophomore Mike Enochs told The Michigan Daily recently that he doesn't usually open e-mails from the University administration, and so was oblivious the sirens that blared on Sept. 11 were only a test. "I don't really look at stuff that isn't important, that's not related to my classes or department," Enoch said. Brown said comments like that have her concerned about how the student population would react in a crisis. "I don't know if he's one voice of a minority or one voice of an awful lot of people," Brown said. E-mails from DPS that would warn the University commu- nity in the case of a campus emer- gency are futile if students don't read them. And a text messaging alert program, Brown said, would face many of the same obstacles of the University's e-mail system. As with emergency e-mails, it could take hours for the program to send text messages out to thousands of people. Also, the message might be interpreted as.a joke or restrained from clearly explaining the situ- ation by a character limit. in any case, it would only reach the people who bothered to get their cell phone numbers into the system. Finkenauer recommends that university security departments try to engage students about secu- rity issues throughout their college careers. He said reiterating infor- mation about precautions individu- als can take to protect themselves is more effective than any particular security measure, because things like blue-light phones and card- swipe doors are generally designed just as much to make people feel safe as they are toactually make them safe. For example, in a society where the cell phone is ubiquitous, Finckenauer said, measures like blue-light phones are redundant. that campus lighting, escortservices or even a text message alert system could do to prevent it. Is it going to happen here? Probably not. Without implementing invasive security measures, the University will probably remain fairly easy picking for criminals, especially if students don't take advantage of precautions already in place. That doesn't mean we should necessar- ily get aggressive about stepping up security; we do, after all, have our own police force. No one wants metal detectors inside University buildings, even though they might have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from injuring dozens of people. There's a balance universities have to strike when they weigh campus security procedures. Maybe DPS has it right by gen- erally ignoring the report recently issued by a panel in Virginia rec- ommended campus security mea- sures. The University and most campuses like it are very safe or at least as safe as unobtrusive mea- sures are going to make it. And for nervous parents, there's always the blue-light phones to make them a little more comfortable. School of Music senior Dan Rector leans.t But Brown said the phones likely work in another way that can't be measured quantitatively. With the illuminated blue columns offering extra light and an emergency escape plan every 20 steps, the lone student may feel more comfortable and the creep lurking behind him might not - feel comfortable attacking. That comfort, Finkenauer said, is a huge part of public security. "Probably the feeling of safety is a gainst a van owned by S.A.F.E. Walk more important issue than the facts of crime," Finckenauer said. Brown said staying visible in all kinds of situations is a goal of DPS. "There are times that officers are there to keep something from hap- pening," she said. "There are other times that they're there because it's a nice thing." Could an incident the magnitude of the Virginia Tech massacre hap- pen here? Sure. There's not much