In a town filled with first-time renters and an uncountable number and variety of landlords, we as students have come to expect a few things. Namely, we’ve grown to accept that those big companies—Madison Property Management, in particular— will look to exploit at every turn the naivete and ignorance of their tenants.
That exploitation comes in a variety of forms: By gutting security deposits when a lease is up, by pressuring students to sign leases under the illusion that they will be left without a place to live and, most recently, by flagrantly violating city housing laws with an illegal Halloween policy.
A week and half before the Halloween weekend, MPM sent out a letter saying it would be enacting two policies. First, the landlord’s security firms would reserve the right to enter a unit if its members saw or heard of any threat to safety or a lease violation. Second, at high-rise apartments like MPM’s Grand Central, tenants would be given an allotment of wristbands they could give to a few guests—without those wristbands, neither guests nor residents would be able to enter the building.
A Daily Cardinal investigation revealed that, according to a UW-Madison law professor, an attorney and a tenants’ rights advocate, both policies were illegal. Because they were not in the lease tenants signed at the beginning of the year, MPM was basically changing the rules in the middle of the game, undermining city housing laws and the rights of its many tenants.
Madison Property Management and its lawyers know housing laws better than just about anyone, so the idea that they simply did not know they were violating the law is entirely unbelievable.
But here’s the thing: After years of the same old tricks from MPM, this board can’t say it is surprised to see this kind of behavior from such a shady organization.
What we are surprised by, however, is the almost complete lack of support from downtown tenants’ supposed advocates on the Common Council.
Four alders represent the downtown area—Scott Resnick, Mike Verveer, Bridget Maniaci and Shiva Bidar-Sielaff—what are they doing to stop these kinds of predatory policies from landlords? How are they working to make sure tenants’ rights aren’t trampled on because every student isn’t an expert in Madison housing ordinances?
We’re not saying students need not educate themselves on their rights as tenants, or that they are excused from reading their leases because someone will do it for them. Students have to know the contract they are entering into, and should know what landlords can and cannot do.
But when landlords like MPM try to exploit loopholes, change the rules of the contract they sign or enact policies that violate the law, tenants should have more advocates at the city level to protect their rights. The biggest fine for trespassing in Madison is easily made up by one month’s rent at many MPM apartments. We can’t take them on ourselves— we need the help of our alders.
With that in mind, The Daily Cardinal is calling upon Resnick, Verveer, Maniaci and Bidar-Sielaff to work harder to protect downtown tenants from the kind of exploitation MPM and other property managers have taken part in.
If we can count on landlords to try to take advantage of students, we should also be able to count on our representatives to come to our aid.
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