Introduction
Thousands of students live in housing that is overpriced, poorly maintained, or flat-out unsafe — and their repair requests are routinely ignored. One in three students who rent reported a maintenance issue that went unfixed for over a month last year. One in five say they’ve dealt with mold, pests, or broken heat in their unit. These are people working part-time jobs to stay enrolled who deserve a safe place to sleep and study.
The university is supposed to inspect housing and enforce the lease, but in practice the system is broken. Students bounce between the housing office, facilities, and an off-campus “community liaison” just to get a complaint on record — and when something does get logged, less than half of issues are ever resolved before move-out.
As a council member, Arie will stand up for student renters and make sure they live in safe, habitable homes. Arie will build the Student Housing Office — a long-promised resource that has never been properly funded or staffed.
Its mission? To cut through the bureaucratic runaround and actually enforce the housing standards students are already owed, to their fullest extent.
The Student Housing Office Will:
Streamline housing complaints
Right now at least four different offices touch student housing, and none of them own the problem. The Student Housing Office will coordinate inspections, repairs, and lease disputes under one roof — from the person who comes to look at your unit to the advocate who escalates it — so issues actually get resolved quickly.
Fix the maintenance portal and let students track every request
Today, when you report a problem it disappears into an inbox and you never hear back. We’ll build a single, student-friendly portal where you can schedule a repair, get text reminders, and track every open request and fee owed on your building.
Increase penalties for dangerous conditions
Negligence has to cost more than ignoring it does. We’ll push for real penalties on landlords and housing contracts that leave students with broken locks, mold, or no heat — and, just as importantly, make sure those penalties are actually enforced instead of quietly waived.
Force housing to take heat and cold seriously
Dorms that bake in September and freeze in January aren’t just uncomfortable — they’re a health issue. We’ll set enforceable minimum and maximum indoor temperatures for university housing and require working climate control in every occupied unit.
Expand the staffing and funding of inspections
Arie’s plan funds more inspectors, housing advocates, and a real student tenant helpline — the people who do the actual work of keeping housing safe — instead of leaving one overstretched office to cover the whole campus.
Crack down on repeat-offending landlords
A small number of landlords cause most of the misery. Arie will publish a watchlist of repeat offenders, pull university referrals and listing privileges from the worst of them, and restore funding to the legal-aid clinic that helps students fight back — a program that has been quietly cut to almost nothing over the last three years.
Guarantee repairs
If a serious problem still isn’t fixed after repeated complaints, the council will step in, complete the repair, and bill it back to the landlord. Arie will use that power whenever necessary, so no student is left living in unsafe housing.
A Zero-Tolerance Policy Toward Bad Landlords
When a dining hall serves unsafe food, it gets shut down. Yet landlords who endanger students are allowed to keep collecting rent, packing units, and cutting corners year after year.
Under Arie’s plan, landlords who refuse to work with the Student Housing Office and repeatedly put students at risk will lose access to university referrals and the off-campus listing service — with no exceptions. We’ll prioritize getting students out of the worst buildings and into safe, fairly-priced housing the council helps steward.
And where a building is chronically neglected, we won’t just fine it forever. Working with tenants case by case, the council and university can step in to bring distressed housing under student-friendly management — protecting renters while keeping homes affordable for the long term.