Lending time to leases

It might be slightly premature to indulge in fantasies of the Edinburgh's student residential area, Marchmont, going up in flames with a revolution and an accompanying chorus of "We're not going to pay rent!" —very much in the style of New York's impoverished artists in the "anti-establishment" musical, Rent. Even so, the exploitation of students, by landlords and letting agencies, is little short of devious and there is a pressing need for students to execute some degree of vigilance when signing a lease.

This issue of The Journal reports that a number of leases being signed are legal only by a hairline. Measures to protect the rights of both landlords and tenants, such as the the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006, seem to be less than effective and students appear to be suffering the brunt of these flaws.

The problem, however, is manifold. Vague legal stipulations for landlords mean that the legislation is susceptible to exploitation. Landlords bend the law to breaking point in order to elude responsibility and claim costs for damages or even simple maintenance. But, as long as this is within the law, it is difficult—impossible, even—to curb.

It is, consequently, essential for students themselves to insist that leases include terms and conditions that ensure landlords meet basic standards of liability. This is no easy feat and requires students to be highly discerning of abstruse legal jargon. A service that students should taken full advantage of is the EUSA advice place, which provides a professional service of reading leases for students to ensure they are fair.

But this is not enough. The presupposition that bold and hapless 18 year-olds will clamber precariously out onto balconies to clean windows is absurd. Equally absurd is the expectation that students can afford to foot the bill for regular professional window cleaning. For a landlord to abdicate responsibility, to such an extent, is just wrong.

Change must be enacted at a higher level. A better watch must be kept on private landlords contracting dodgy agreements. Legal criteria must be tightened, and letting agencies must be obliged to accept greater levels of responsibility. In addition, terms of contracts should be made clearer to students signing them, so that there are no dire consequences of "not reading the small print".

As students—or indeed, impoverished artists in a musical—it is tempting to offload blame onto "the Man" but, in this case, blame is best distributed between the various players and responsibility accordingly shared.