Tenants and renters in the Georgetown neighborhood were treated to a closer look at rental procedures last Thursday at a forum held in the Leavey Program Room.
The event, co-sponsored by the Office of Off-Campus Student Life and the Citizens Association of Georgetown, featured speakers from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, the University and the neighborhood community.
“Living off-campus is different in the respect that you have real neighbors,” Valerie Hernandez (SFS ‘06) said. “You can’t throw parties like you would in your dorm room.”
The forum drew a modest crowd of about 30 local residents and a dozen students. CAG President Victoria Rixey said that she expected the attendance to be higher at a second forum to be held next semester, noting that many students do not always make the best decisions when considering where to live off campus.
“They tend to take what there is without doing a full search and often end up without the best deals,” she said.
The forum, intended to educate renters and tenants alike about their responsibilities, is timely in the wake of last fall’s fire, which claimed the life of Daniel Rigby (MSB ‘05) and was initially blamed on faulty wiring in the townhouse where he lived. The investigations that followed the tragedy also uncovered numerous fire code violations in other buildings rented by Georgetown students.
-Anna Ziajka
