Some San Jose State students felt the weight of paying rent in the fall lifted off their shoulders when the university transitioned to classes online for the rest of 2020 to accommodate for social distancing guidelines.
Since mid-March, many students living in off-campus housing around the university have moved back home to continue classes remotely. Many of those students have chosen not to renew their lease agreements, but others are finding it difficult to cancel their contracts with off-campus buildings.
On March 22, SJSU pledged to refund 42% of the semester’s rent to students who left university-owned housing by March 30, a rent refund that students said no other off-campus housing facility has implemented so far.
“I know some leases are different, but in my case the person I pass on the lease gives me back my [$450] deposit I originally paid for,” biology junior Cecilia Rios Del Rio said in a text message. “So that’s one of the main reasons to try and find someone to take over my lease, which is really hard considering everything going on.”
Some students said they are leaving their apartments, but face dilemmas in trying to free themselves of legally-binding leases.
“Looking for a female to take over my lease from May-July,” microbiology sophomore Sanika Samel wrote in a post on the SAMMY app. “You can continue into the school year if you want. [Direct message] me if interested, looking for a replacement ASAP.”
Samel is a resident of 27 North, an apartment complex located at North 6th Street and East Santa Clara Street, just two blocks away from SJSU.
She said she wants to move back home because of the troubling concentration of coronavirus cases in San Jose and because she no longer has on-campus classes.
This is the case for many 27 North residents who are struggling to get out of their leases.
27 North sells apartments on a bed-by-bed basis. This means that individuals are not responsible for covering their roommate’s rent if they decide to leave.
Over a Zoom call, political science senior Baljit Kaur said when she and her sister spoke with 27 North management personnel, they were unwilling to let the sisters cancel their leases even though they no longer occupied the residence.
27 North representatives did not respond to a request for comment by publication date.
“The only thing they were offering were payment plans,” Kaur said from her home in Manteca. “We're going back and forth . . . and then they said, 'We're not working on anything else,’ and that's kind of where it was like, ‘Wow.’ ”
The only other option was for the sisters to find a new tenant to take over their lease for the two months left on their contract, but that incurs significant costs of its own.
Once the Kaurs and Samel find someone to take over their respective 27 North lease agreements, they must pay a $750 “reassignment fee.”
“Obviously it’s going to be hard to find someone to take over at a time like this especially,” Samel said.
Even if Samel could find someone to take her lease tomorrow, she said she is worried about losing her security deposit after her landlord inspects the apartment – an additional $750 loss.
“I do know there’s nothing that serious in the apartment and I’m worried they’re going to overcharge us,” Samel said.
After Baljit Kaur encountered other disgruntled 27 North residents, such as Samel, she and her sister started a petition on Change.org to lobby the apartment complex to let students cancel their lease contracts.
The petition has more than 740 signatures as of publication date.
“We never saw that the pandemic [was coming],” she said. “You know, like, the over 22 million unemployment? All of that was unforeseen when we first signed the contract.”
As Kaur’s petition gained traction, she said she was contacted by another resident of 27 North.
“Someone actually reached [out] to me on Instagram asking if I started a petition and then from there, she was actually in a group of residents who all had the same concerns,” she said. “So I was added in.”
The group of tenants began leaving comments detailing their grievances on Instagram posts from 27 North, but Kaur said the comments were swiftly deleted and that management personnel told them to stop commenting.
“We were commenting, like, 'Hey, don't forget about your current residents.' Like, 'Hey can you communicate with us?' and they deleted all of those,” Kaur said. “It just shows, they don't want the concerns of their current residents to go out in public.”
Through more outreach on social media platforms like Wildfire and the SAMMY App, Kaur and other tenants organized a group chat of about 20 people, galvanized to reach out and negotiate with 27 North management.
Kaur said the latest conference call with 27 North in late April was unproductive.
She said their concerns aren’t limited to lease agreements and superfluous apartment fees.
During the Zoom call, Kaur said she and other tenants also asked the landlords if they had adopted a screening process for new tenants to ensure those with COVID-19 symptoms do not enter the building.
“We were told that those were just like our fears and concerns and that no one else has really raised those concerns,” Kaur said. “At one point in the conversation [the landlords] mentioned how as long as a person is healthy and fit we don't really have to worry about contracting it. Which was kind of shocking to be honest.”
Because they did not find 27 North’s offers satisfying, Kaur said she and her newfound tenants’ collective are looking for legal routes to address their grievances.
Going from only having her sister by her side to more than 700 signatures on their Change.org petition, Kaur said she finds solace in knowing she helped provide a platform for other tenants to lobby 27 North.
“It’s unfair to make us pay when we’re not even occupying our bed spaces for a good reason,” Samel said. “Dorms and apartments should understand and let us cancel our lease.”
