Off-Campus Housing Procedures Clarified

By Ben Maitland
Rotunda ReporterOff-campus housing is defined as any accommodations that are leased from a private landlord within the Farmville community. While many returning Longwood students will once again call the dorms and Longwood-managed apartments home, there are those students who will be applying to live off-campus in one of the several off-campus housing units. With housing sign-ups for the 2010-2011 school year starting the first week of February, the Office of Residential and Commuter Life (RCL), along with off-campus housing units such as Sunchase Apartments, are looking towards making the process for students as worry-free as possible.

Associate Director of Housing Doug Howell, along with off-campus landlords from Sunchase and Walk2Campus, held a Community Landlord Breakfast on Wed., Oct. 21. They discussed a timeline and upcoming events that RCL has planned as the off-campus housing sign-up dates near. Howell is confident that all the measures and procedures for the application process will prove successful.

"When you talk about off campus living, we have to be very clear what that means, in other words, how that student defines off campus. To us, living off campus means that they want to become a commuter student and to live independent of anything Longwood-managed," said Howell.

The off campus release application period will run from February 8-12 for those who are eligible. Eligible residents must complete at least 56 credit hours by the conclusion of the spring 2010 semester in order to submit an Off-Campus Request Application. The applications are rank ordered from highest to lowest number of earned credits when they come in and RCL determines how many students can go off-campus. If many students have the same number of credit hours, the enrollment dates of the students are looked at to see who paid their deposit the earliest. That student would get priority over the others. Submission of a release application does not guarantee release.

"With the credit hours, it is also calculated what a student will have at the end of spring semester," said Howell. "That's how the residency requirement is written in the handbook."

Then on February 18, those who have been selected will be invited to an orientation session where they will be briefed about policies and other important matters. After that, they will receive a letter from RCL informing them that they can move forward and sign their respective lease with a landlord in one of the housing communities.

According to Howell, RCL has always encouraged students to wait before signing a lease because it is in the students' best interests. "I don't want to put students in that position," said Howell. "We don't want the student to sign any leases until they know clearly, beyond any doubt, that they can."

However, Sunchase Apartments have already started pre-leasing their available housing spaces. Sunchase's Property Manager Evelyn Queen said, "We haven't changed from previous years. What we do is we go ahead and start pre-leasing. So we're leasing now. We've always allowed people to sign an addendum."

The addendum states that if Longwood University were to deny a leaseholder's application to move off campus or would not accept the leaseholder's enrollment application for fall 2010, then Sunchase would have to do two things. They would have to release the leaseholder from the agreement that was set to start and end on certain dates and they would also have to refund all monies, if any, that were paid for application fees, security deposits and/or restoration fees. The landlord would not release the leaseholder or refund any monies for any other reasons other than those two.

"We try to work with Longwood within their policies and procedures," Queen said. "We have a lot of students and the questions they ask are about the housing addendum. Then we have a lot of parents who have a lot of questions. We have information for the parents and we offer to talk with them. We can handle those too." The addendum is something that Sunchase will continue to offer.

Senior Nicole Gonder said, "The lease signing is not too difficult, but it can seem that way for first time renters. You just need to make sure that you read everything carefully, get your parents to look over it, and ask the realtors questions before you commit to anything."

With housing sign-ups still several months away, Howell hopes to have more meetings with local landlords to ensure that all bases are covered.

"I think we've got a good process," Howell said. "We're still putting the finishing touches on a few things.