The rush to sign off-campus housing contracts for next year has already hit a lull. For weeks, anxious students have been trying to navigate the murky waters of Collegetown realty, often unaware of the laws meant to protect tenants. And like every year, the scramble has left many unclear of what their lease really means, what they are paying for and what services they have the right to receive.

A support system for student tenants is necessary to inform the off-campus community of their rights and responsibilities, and Cornell should look to the University of Pennsylvania as a model.

Penn provides its students such a service through the Penn Consumer’s Board. For almost 20 years, this group of undergraduate and graduate students, university staff and lawyers has provided students with free legal advice, conducted interviews and published landlord surveys in the Philadelphia area.

Providing a forum for students to speak up about their rental experiences with local landlords is a useful and important way to assist tenants in understanding what exactly they are signing on to when they agree to the terms of a lease.

The landlord surveys conducted and published by the Penn Consumer’s Board allow students to numerically rank their experiences in three general categories: landlord-tenant relationships; apartment/house quality or condition; and landlord’s responsiveness to repairs. These areas are of utmost importance to any potential renter and making this information available to potential tenants will hold landlords more accountable for their actions.

Cornell would do well to create its own system for tenant-landlord information sharing. Given the high turnover rate of students, landlords have little incentive to keep up with standards or make improvements on their properties. At the same time, the fall semester hustle and bustle to sign leases puts students at a disadvantage and forces them to make uninformed decisions. A permanent body must be established to ensure that the buildings students inhabit are held to correct standards, and that landlords comply with existing laws.

While the Off-Campus Housing Office provides some education to the Cornell community, it is far too limited to meet the needs that exist. OCHO currently provides students, staff and faculty with useful information on what to look for in an apartment and a lease, as well as advertises for some landlords in the area. While the information on the current website is useful, more robust tenant-to-tenant feedback would prove invaluable.

The OCHO has the capacity to provide a practical tool for the community that would assist renters, hold landlords accountable and likely improve the condition of rental properties in Ithaca as a whole.