Summer sublets pose legal problems

By Kelly Rayburn
Daily Bruin Reporter

Sublessees beware.

When UCLA Student Legal Services reopens in September, after
closing for July and August, it predicts a number of students who
had problems with summertime housing conflicts, said Student Legal
Services counseling attorney Elizabeth Kemper.

Kemper said a number of students face eviction after subletting
without permission from their landlord to do so while others come
to Student Legal Services trying to recover money owed to them by
sublessees who they say took off without paying rent.

But Marie Ehrhardt, the manager of a large Midvale complex, said
she does not have problems with summer residents.

“I’ve never in 13-and-a-half years had much of a
problem with anyone paying rent,” she said.
“(Sublessees) look hard to find a good person to take their
place.”

Tenants are careful when looking for a summer resident, because
they are trusting that person with their apartment and their
furniture, Ehrhardt said.

But other complexes have different policies on subleasing.

One Westwood apartment manager, who wished to remain anonymous,
said subletting is not permitted at his complex because of problems
that occurred in the past.

“This is just the company’s policy,” he
said.

He added that in the past rooms have been “trashed”
by sublessees.

Other Westwood managers merely discourage the practice.

Even Ehrhardt, who said summer residents have “always been
very good residents,” requires a photocopy of the summer
resident’s driver’s license.

Kemper offers a simple piece of advice for students:
“It’s very important to get something in
writing.”

Extensive sublease agreements outlining the time of the
sublease, the security deposit that will be charged, the number of
roommates a sublessee will be living with, as well as guidelines
about smoking, drinking alcohol, having guests sleep over and
parking spaces, are available at Student Legal Service’s Web
site, www.studentlegal.ucla.edu.

But a subletting agreement between students may not be enough if
they want to avoid legal problems. Kemper also recommends that
students wanting to sublease get written permission from their
landlord before doing so.

Students who have used Student Legal Services in the past tend
to avoid the more casual sublease agreements, which are more likely
to lead to legal problems, Kemper said.

For Ehrhardt, as far as summer residency goes, the bottom line
is that the rent is getting paid.

“These are young people and they have a long way to go and
they want to get good credit,” she said.

And, in a way, getting the rent paid and establishing good
credit may be easier to do in the next few months.

According to the Assistant Director of Housing Services Frank
Montana, students seeking housing near UCLA may be greeted with
lower rent rates in the summer’s first months, as many
students leave Westwood for home or to travel.

Though Montana acknowledged that a number of people leave
Westwood in the summer, he said the Office of Off-Campus Housing
“doesn’t even have a way of ball-parking” the
exact number of vacant apartments, and cannot accurately measure
the amount by which housing costs decrease.

But he was confident, at least, of some decline in housing
costs.

“Rents typically go down a little bit,” Montana
said. “In some cases (sublessors) may offer their place at a
lesser price just so they can get some rent.”