Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Roomr Rates Landlords, Homes

 

With the annual upperclassmen scramble to confirm off-campus living plans for the coming year in mind, a website that will allow students to discuss and rate the quality of landlords and conditions of homes launched Wednesday. The site, Roomr, is the product of collaboration between Students of Georgetown Inc., the Georgetown University Student Association and the Georgetown Student Tenant Association and aims to increase transparency in housing selection.

“The goal of Roomr is to make sure that seniors and people living off campus can keep this information for younger students’ use so that when they’re looking for housing they don’t have this issue where they have no idea who a good landlord is,” GSTA founder Alyssa Peterson (COL ’14), a former GUSA deputy chief of staff who currently serves as transition chair, said.

The site aims to eliminate some of the frenzy typically associated with selecting an off-campus home.

“It’s such a competitive process that a lot of students just sign up for any lease they can get because they know that the landlords have so much leverage. This is a way for students to already have an idea of where to seek out the right landlords,” GSTA Co-Director Nick Suttle (COL ’15) said.

The website, loosely modeled after Rate My Professors, allows students to post comments detailing the responsibility and reliability of their landlords and the condition of their houses. The houses up for lease can be organized on the website based on monthly price, the number of people they can accommodate or the location.

The site’s creators said they hope that in addition to serving as a database for student tenants, the website will serve to make landlords more accountable for their actions.

“The goal is to make sure the good landlords are rewarded and create this market-based incentive for them to do better because people will gravitate toward the landlords that are ranked better on Roomr,” Peterson said.

Although neighborhood landlords currently have not been informed about Roomr, Suttle said that landlords will be notified of the site’s existence.

“It would defeat the purpose if they didn’t know, in terms of increasing accountability,” Suttle said.

GUSA is responsible for publicizing Roomr, which it will do primarily through a social media campaign set to launch this week.

GSTA will oversee whether or not the homes posted on the website have been inspected within the past two years and are in possession of a basic business license and moderating the site’s comments to avoid slander or swear words.

The idea for the website originated with The Corp. The Corp IT+Marketing department developed and programmed the website as well as paid for server cost.

“Even if this isn’t the most even-handed collaboration in terms of where the expenses are being paid, I think it’s a good first step for The Corp as an organization to think about how it can create positive partnerships with other groups on campus that are mutually beneficial,” The Corp Chief Executive Officer Sam Rodman (MSB ’15) said.

Roomr will be the second external website developed by the IT+M department, after last spring’s launch of the pre-registration tool Classy.

“It represents this entirely new effort from The Corp to serve students,” Rodman said. “Our external storefronts have a great impact on student life and it’s a great way to serve students but these things take three or four years to get off the ground. It’s been really cool to see that we can consistently find new ways to benefit students that we can churn out every six months, every year or so.”

Although entirely student-run, Roomr complies with the university’s 2010-2017 Campus Plan Agreement, which dictates that the university must maintain a list of rental homes in West Georgetown and Burleith that have basic business licenses.

“The way the current [Office of Neighborhood Life]-maintained website works is that they basically solicit landlords,” GUSA Secretary of Neighborhood Relations Chris Kraft (SFS ’15) said. “But that largely misses what’s actually happening. That doesn’t take into account students who aren’t living in houses with BBLs.”

The ONL declined to comment at this time, stating that they had insufficient knowledge of the website.

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