Royal Purple

Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Alison Wisneski Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner said the city has an obligation to maintain safety, but the issue of housing is a complicated one.

The temperatures outside last week dropped down to dangerous degrees in a matter of hours, causing some professors to cancel their classes. If you were lucky, you could just forgo class that day and relax in the comfort of your dorm room or apartment.

However, if you're one of the many students who live in sub-standard off campus housing, the past couple of weeks may have been an awful experience.

If your apartment isn't quite up to par, winter is the season you'll find out. The rest of the year may hide your apartment's downfalls, but when it gets cold your place's true colors may show.

The most popular downfalls of sub-standard apartments are poor heat, drafts and critters in the walls or elsewhere. The blistering cold of winter will bring these downfalls to light better than any other season.

The real appalling thing is that, in most cases, tenants aren't aware of these potential problems when they sign the lease.

Any lurking problem may not come to your attention in the spring or summer.

However, once the cold winds start to blow and the snow begins to fall, you may have problems to face.

UW-Whitewater junior Adrienne Peterson is one of the many off-campus students feeling the cold burn of those winter winds.

"We have a lot of windows and doors that are old and cracked, and we lose a lot of heat," Peterson said.

Peterson said she pays approximately $300 per month for their heating bill during the winter months.

"We've had [the landlord] come, and they've tried to fix the doors," Peterson said. "But it hasn't done much."

Peterson said it might help if some landlords decreased the large number of properties they own so they could give more attention to others.

There are some properties owned by good landlords; there are a lot that aren't. One of the big reasons for this is because there is no license required to be a landlord in Whitewater. "There is no pre-qualifications, permit or licensure to lease a house," Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner said.

Continued...

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