UTSA students unable to cancel leases
Tashfiq Sadeque was a high school senior in Round Rock, bound for the University of Texas at San Antonio, when he and a friend went through the university housing process in April to sign up for a two-bedroom apartment on campus.
The University Oaks student complex offered full kitchens, and without a meal plan, Sadeque figured he’d save money when compared with living in a dorm. Everyone assumed that the coronavirus pandemic would ease over the summer.
Instead, cases surged. UTSA decided that the overwhelming majority of fall classes would be online. Sadeque, 17, decided that staying with his parents was safer. He and his roommate called Campus Living Villages, the company that owns and manages the apartments, to ask for release from their monthly rent of $753 each.
They were told the leases were binding if they remained enrolled — so Sadeque withdrew from UTSA. He still paid a $900 fee to cancel his lease.
“It’s just tough, because it’s my freshman year of college,” he said. “I just didn’t expect it to happen like this. I don’t want to fall behind.”
Even without in-person classes, a small fraction of UTSA’S 30,000 students are moving into campus housing this week. But it will be about half the normal contingent.
Even with public health proce
dures in place, students said the ongoing pandemic made the close quarters feel risky. Some didn’t see the point of living on campus while all their classes were online. Some had lost jobs — and rent money.
UTSA this summer allowed its 2,300 dormdwelling students to be released from their housing contracts upon request, but Campus Living Villages, with more than 1,800 spots at University Oaks and Chisholm Hall, did not.
The university and the company will each house slightly more than 1,000 students this semester. Sadeque knows he’s not the only one to drop the school to get out of a Campus Living Villages lease, though it’s unclear how many others have done so.
The company declined an interview request but released a statement that said, in part, “We rely on monthly installments from our leaseholders to meet our financial obligations, including operational overhead costs and payroll for our team members.”
Serena Hirani, 18, a freshman from Corpus Christi, said the housing application UTSA sent her in March listed only University Oaks or Chisholm as options. Before signing a lease, Hirani said, she asked a financial manager at Campus Living Villages whether she’d get a refund or cancellation if the university were to shut down in the fall and was told the university would decide. So she signed.
“I thought maybe I’d lose a spot or something,” Hirani said.
She decided to major in public health and epidemiology, then found out last month that all her classes would be online. She was seeing conflicting messages about the safety precautions at University Oaks, and her household in Corpus Christi includes a highrisk relative.
“If I were to go to campus, I would not be able to come home at all,” Hirani said.
The pandemic has affected her family’s income, and she’s no longer sure where her $750 monthly rent will come from.
Campus Living Villages denied her request to cancel her lease. Hirani said she advertised for a sublet on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and everywhere else she could think of, but “no one is interested in a lease because everything is online.”
She’ll stay in Corpus Christi and has applied to the university for an emergency grant from federal coronavirus relief funds.
Maximum awards are generally around $1,500. Hirani will also try to figure out a part-time job, although those are now in reduced supply.
“It’ll be hard, but I have no other choice,” she said. “I’m not looking to fall back a year because of a rent thing.”
Many students who lived in nearby off-campus apartments not affiliated with the university also are stuck in leases the pandemic has rendered inconvenient or impossible. The financial difficulties can halt students’ progress, so UTSA has publicly encouraged those facilities, as well as Campus Living Villages, to follow its lead and let them cancel or defer leases.
“Our focus, beyond the health and well-being of the students, is to advance their academic careers,” said Joe Izbrand, university spokesman.
But UTSA doesn’t have the authority to demand its partner in student housing give students a break, Izbrand said.
“Campus Living Villages is a private business that conducts its leasing and operations in the way that it chooses,” Izbrand said. “The frustration that we see and feel is the inability to tell a private company what to do.”
A line of cars formed outside the gated University Oaks complex Thursday morning for move-in. Lauren Kammerer, 19, a sophomore public health major from Austin, said she considered trying to cancel her lease but decided against it.
“I think it’s going to be easier to focus on my online classes from anywhere but home,” she said.
Baylee Hudspeth, an 18year-old freshman, lined up in a white Honda Civic with a gray cat in the front seat, her mother in a car behind her and her father in a U-haul completing the convoy. Hudspeth said she chose University Oaks for her own appropriately sized room and because it’s the only campus housing that would take her cat.
“Also because I signed a lease,” Hudspeth said, “and I can’t get out.”