The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/off-campus-housing/)
Three students in the school of Industrial and Labor Relations have created the Ithaca Tenants’ Union to combat imbalanced power dynamics among tenants and landlords.
The number of students who want to live on-campus far exceeds the number that actually live on-campus, according to a housing survey. The current system consists of guaranteed on-campus housing for all incoming first-year students. Following freshman year, students have a variety of on-campus housing options, which include the West Campus House System, program houses and cooperative houses. In order to live on campus, students register online for housing, then receive a randomly designated General Room Selection timeslot. During this timeslot, they select a room and sign a housing contract.
The University explained that it was unable to offer transfer students housing on-campus because the incoming class of transfers was “unusually large,” so there was an “overwhelming demand” for housing.
Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 intends to create a new commission to holistically assess long-standing housing issues in the city, including the lack of enforcement mechanisms, affordable housing and preventing landlords from requiring leases to be signed over a year in advance.
Interim President Hunter Rawlings is working to ensure improved safety measures for students, off-campus staff and faculty renters living off-campus housing who he says “deserve no less.”