What is your role as off-Grounds housing manager?
Hawes: If I were to put a word around it, I would say ‘conduit.’ I’m where you come to get information. I had a student come in last week who had a problem with her house, and I called the city inspector for her and got him to go over there and inspect it, and we’re dealing with that problem. I deal with roommate issues, but mostly I refer people: “I think [for] this problem you really should go to mediation,” or “For this particular issue I think you need to talk to Student Legal Services.” My primary function is education, so starting [Sept. 22] I’m doing dorm talks at the first-year dorms to say, “No, you don’t have to sign a lease tomorrow, the people who you think are your best friends forever right now you’re probably not going to like at the end of the first semester.” I see it as educating and disseminating that information and directing students to the right sources.
What’s your role as chief operating officer of Off-Campus Partners?
Jones: I work for Vicki and Student Council ... to educate students ... [and] to provide an off-Grounds housing Web site, which helps us find housing, so we do the technology and then we go out and interface with the landlords to get them to list their properties.
Hawes: Last year at the beginning of the year when Virginia Tech had students [who were hospitalized because of] carbon monoxide [poisoning], I called Trina and we had a flash alert up on our Web site within three or four hours, so her response is that fast. And it’s also a revenue-sharing situation, so they’re doing all the sales work to get the landlords to advertise on the Web site, but then we get some of that revenue back here, which Student Council then turns into off-Grounds housing scholarships.
How many students live off Grounds?
Hawes: 65 percent of the undergraduate population.
Jones: Close to 100 percent of the graduate population.
Hawes: It’s probably 65 percent of the undergrad population, but of the second-year population, I think it stays at about 50/50 no matter what we do ... That’s what it’s been for the past couple of years.
What reasons do you hear for why students choose off-Grounds housing?
Hawes: I think there are a couple of things that drive it. One of the biggest is that they have their own bedroom in many cases. More and more they’re having not only their own bedroom but their own bathroom. There’s a big drive to get away from [the University Judiciary Committee] and all the rules, so I think they’re probably the three biggest.
Jones: The only other thing I’d add is privacy. For some people, it is location. I think on-Grounds can’t be beat for a lot of locations, but for some students who want to live right behind the Ed School ... I think the other thing is it’s a rite of passage, moving off-Grounds.
Hawes: And it’s our culture. If you go to UNC, the culture there definitely is to stay in campus housing for the first two years, and then they go off the third and fourth, so it’s just sort of what we do.
What should students who are considering living off-Grounds be prepared for?
Hawes: I think the first thing you have to be prepared for is the 12-month lease versus a lease that lasts for the academic year. I think it’s much more intimate in a lot of ways to live in an off-Grounds apartment with three other people than it is to live in a dorm with three other people, because I know that there are other apartments, but you don’t have that common link of being in the dorm. I think those two are probably the biggest challenges. I think managing your finances probably gets a little more challenging when you live off Grounds; you’ve got utilities, you’ve got decisions to make — “Do we put in a landline and who’s going to pay for that, do we put in cable and who’s going to pay for that?” — if you’re in a dorm and there are bathrooms at the end of the hallway, the University is going to clean those bathrooms. If you’re in an apartment, someone has to clean the bathroom, and if your boyfriend has stayed over for the last two weeks and trashed the shower ... I think that good life skills come from living off Grounds, but I think that there are a lot more challenges than students really stop to think about.
What are some problems that you see over and over again?
Hawes: The biggest problem that I see — and it’s throughout the year — right now, the problem that I see is first-years that are coming in saying “We need to sign a lease right now,” and “Where should we live — Do we live on the Corner? Do we live on JPA? Where do we go? Once we make it through this semester of lease signing and juggling, then next semester the problem is so-and-so is on the lease and is not coming back to school,” or “I signed a lease with these three other girls and I really don’t get along with them now, what am I going to do?” At the end of the summer when people come back — usually the month of August — I get roommate issues, or problems of three women sign a lease assuming that they’re going to find a fourth, and they don’t find a fourth so they take in a transfer student, not that there’s anything wrong with transfer students, but then they have someone from the outside that they don’t really know, and that creates issues of its own. I think that roommate problems all year long are probably the biggest issue. At the end of the year, the biggest issue is security deposits and getting it back to everyone. We have the occasional landlord problem, but most of those are solved with a phone call — that there’s been a miscommunication from the student, the student hasn’t even communicated to the landlord. I think we have a pretty good relationship with our off-Grounds landlords now that they respond to requests from us to address an issue.
Talk about the differences between the three big areas of off-Grounds housing: JPA, the Corner and the farther-away complexes like Eagles Landing.
Hawes: Well from a cost perspective, the Eagles Landing and College Park areas are the probably one of the easiest [in which] to negotiate your rent down. The problem over there is getting back and forth to Grounds. There’s nowhere to put your car, the shuttles stop running at 11 or 12, so that can be a problem. That being said, it’s a good place for people who want to be away from the on-Grounds experience. When they leave here, they want to go home. They don’t want to just go to the Corner, which is just kind of an extension of Grounds. I think there are two different kinds of students that live on the Corner area and the JPA area. The people on the Corner side are typically the people that go out more, that party more — I don’t want to say that they’re more social, but there’s definitely a much more social aspect to the Corner than there is to JPA. From one side of Grounds to the other, I think JPA tends to be a little bit cheaper, I don’t know that it’s significant, but it could be $100 a month, which over the course of a year, that’s $1,200. Parking is more of a premium on the Corner side than the JPA side. There are students who really look for housing according to the school that they’re in, like there are kids in the E-School who want to be close to the E-School, if they’re in the College, they want to be close to Central Grounds. If they’re in Curry, they’re on the JPA side of town because they can walk to their buildings.
Do you have a range of prices across off-Grounds housing?
Jones: I have some general numbers. There are a lot of variability in these, particularly are utilities included or are they not. These are ranges — I would say for one bedroom, you’re looking at $650 all the way up to $1,895, with the average being around $850. For a two-bedroom, you’re looking at anywhere from $700 to $1,800. For a three-bedroom, probably anywhere from $1000 to $3000, and for a four-bedroom, I think the cheapest four-bedroom is $1,150 all the way up to that $3,000 range again.
Other than the Off-Grounds Housing Office, are there any other resources for students who live off-Grounds?
Hawes: Student Legal Services, University Mediation Services ... the city inspector is a good one. The University pays the city to employ a city inspector to inspect properties that are in the area surrounding us. I think to look for a place to live — certainly our Web site, Blue Ridge Apartment Council has a Web site, craigslist has a lot of apartments in there, and there’s another one — Uloop ... You still see a lot of stuff in The Hook and c-ville [magazine]. In The [Daily] Progress, I don’t think there’s as much, although there’s obviously some, but for resources ... Student Legal Services, mediation, and resident advisors. I talk to resident advisors, and they’re a good resource to point people in the right place. If you have a roommate problem as a first-year, it gives you a heads-up for how to deal with things when they happen down the line. My Web site actually has a lot of stuff on there that you can just go read: Off-Grounds 101, roommate agreement. I’m not saying that everyone needs to sit down and sign a roommate agreement, but I think everybody needs to read through it to say, “Oh yeah, I never thought about that,” and have the conversation.
Jones: You don’t have to sign a piece of paper, but you need to discuss with your roommates how are we going to divide the bills, how are we going to handle cleaning, what are our policies on guests and how do we want to interact together in terms of noise and that kind of stuff.
Hawes: I think a big issue off Grounds, and on Grounds as well, but at least on Grounds when you go in the dorm, the door shuts behind you and locks, and that’s not the case off-Grounds. I think personal safety is a huge issue off Grounds that we just don’t talk about. I think if there are four people in the apartment, you all need to have that conversation — like the last one to leave absolutely must lock the door. We can’t have windows open when we leave for Spring Break, or even, if we’re on the first floor, we can’t have windows open at night. One of the break-ins that we had last year was on the second floor, it was on the 14th Street side of town, and someone had climbed up on the railing of the first-floor apartment and pulled themselves up to the second-floor apartment with the railing and then gone in through the screen door that was on their deck. I think you all need to be honest. We’ve been 18 to 22, and I absolutely realize that when you’re that age you’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof, but personal safety is a huge issue that we at least need to think about.
Anything else you wanted to add?
Hawes: I think it’s important for students who are thinking about living off Grounds to know that if you’re on financial aid, you still get that financial aid. You get for housing what you would get if you lived on Grounds. A lot of students don’t know that and that might actually be part of the decision-making factors that they’re going to be giving up that money, and that’s not true. The challenge is that you’re given that money all at once, so it’s up to you to then budget it out.
Jones: And you’re not given it until after classes start, so you also need to budget because typically you have [a] security deposit and your first month’s rent due at the very beginning, and that may all happen before you get your financial aid award, so you need to manage your cash at the beginning of the semester carefully.
Hawes: I don’t have this on the Web site yet, but one of the things I want to do this year is go out to Harris Teeter or Kroger or Bed Bath and Beyond and get in carts what I think you need to start living in an apartment. You come home with Bounty paper towels and somebody else in your apartment says, “Well, I would never buy Bounty because they cost twice as much as the generic ones, so I’m not paying you for that.” You can see how things quickly fall apart.
Jones: There are definitely the one-time start-up costs.
Hawes: For rising third-years, if you’re considering moving, not living with the people you lived with second year but going on to live with new people in the third year, you all need to talk about a semester abroad. Is someone going to do it, and know it before you walk into it. It’s very hard. I have a situation now where there are four students in an apartment — it’s a three-bedroom apartment. Two students are sharing a bedroom. One of the two students in the shared bedroom has decided to do a semester abroad. Her expectation is that the other three people in the apartment are just going to pay her rent, they’ll split up her portion, and the three of them pay it for second semester. One of the three students is on a very strict budget. She budgeted in what she’s paying for rent. She can’t pay an extra $150 a month. Living with someone ... is very different from living down the hall, from being in every class with them, from hanging out with them every night. I think that money is probably my biggest caution. Don’t lie to your parents and tell them, “Oh no problem I’m going to be able to sublet my apartment for the summer,” because everybody here is trying to sublet their apartment for the summer.
Jones: And those sublets are way far below market rate.
Hawes: And you can end up subletting your apartment to what you think is one person and eight people live in there for the summer, so careful with that. Just take your time. First of all, I think every second-year should stay on Grounds, and here’s why: You come as a first-year, you have to figure out how to feed yourself, how to get yourself on schedule to get up and go to classes, you have to find your way around Grounds, you’ve got to figure out what your social life is going to be, find out who your friends are, figure out all of this stuff. When you come back as a second-year, take a year off. All you have to know is where your room is, and you’ll take care of everything else. If you move off Grounds, you start it all over again. Now you’ve got to figure out how to live with three new people, how to do this, how to pay rent all summer when you’re not here, utilities — take a year off and breathe. That being said, I would probably tear down Gooch-Dillard and put up different kinds of housing, but I think it’s something absolutely worth considering ... I think living in the dorms, there’s some merit in that in making the college experience everything that it could be.
Jones: I couldn’t agree more. I think that living on Grounds, there’s something about living on Grounds that living off Grounds can’t replicate, in terms of the community experience that you get, and frankly, in most cases the proximity to classes is really hard to beat. For community and convenience, living on Grounds is a really great option, and I would encourage all second-years to do that. But this office is here as a resource for those who don’t choose to do that, and then for third- and fourth-years when they do decide it’s time to have that rite of passage happen.
Hawes: Most of our students live within a one-mile radius of the Rotunda. Within that mile, over the last few years we’ve probably added a thousand new bedrooms ... There are lots and lots of new bedrooms, and that’s the other thing I would encourage — there are houses that have been rental units since the ‘70s, and they should probably not be rented for a while so they can be renovated. But there’s a lot of good stuff out there for rent.
Jones: Maybe the one other thing I might mention is that when you move off Grounds, you move from being just part of the University community to being a part of the Charlottesville community. I think it’s important to recognize that that transition happens, to get to know your neighbors, to proactively get to know them so that they’re going to come to you first before they do something like calling the police, and to be good stewards of the University in the Charlottesville community.
Hawes: The Venable neighborhood is across from the [University] Bookstore, and 10 years ago that neighborhood was probably 100 percent owner-occupied, and in the last 10 years those people have gotten to be in their 70s, 80s, and 90s and are moving away. It’s being bought as investment properties and students have been put in there, and it really changes the dynamic of the neighborhood.
Jones: It’s also a really cool opportunity to get to know people who are in the city and to get to have an experience that is really more than just everybody your same age and stage of life.
Hawes: And they all have stories. And they all probably ... have some relationship at some point in time to the University.
Jones: Either it’s a professor or a staff member or they went here.
Hawes: I put my cell phone number on my message and it’s on the Web site, and students can call me and do call me anytime of day or night and on the weekend. I’m always around, I’m always available. The biggest thing is, if you don’t talk to me, talk to somebody who lives off Grounds, who has experience and kind of knows their way around. For first-years ... that’s what I’m going to tell them. Just don’t sign a lease because. Find something out.
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