For students searching for off-campus housing next year, a Student Association initiative aims to provide new tools to avoid bad landlords and properties with quality-of-life issues.

Last semester, Luca Cassidy ‘25, then-vice president for student success, collaborated with Binghamton University’s Student Tenants Union to create a survey allowing students and residents to rate their off-campus housing experience. The survey asks respondents to describe the physical condition of their residence and anonymously complete a host of questions about their landlord, including if they experienced harassment, retaliation or were given an unjust eviction notice.

In 2021, a different housing survey was released to document negative experiences students had with landlords. However, it only collected about 150 responses over three years, according to Nicole Burek ‘25, a former housing organizer for the Student Tenants Union. By contrast, the current survey received more than 400 responses in its first few weeks.

The VPSS office has now launched a website for students to see how others rated their experience living at a property. It features an interface similar to Google Maps, where you can search for a particular address or all properties owned by a specific landlord. If a student rated that apartment or house in the survey, a colored dot will appear at its location on the map. Each property is rated on a scale from one to five.

Survey responses for each address are also publicly available, allowing students to read reviews of the property and see what other tenants paid in rent.

In May, Burek told Pipe Dream that this website would help students looking for feedback on a particular address before signing a lease.

“Right now, the only way that you can do that is you can look up an address, and if you’re lucky, someone has said something about it on Reddit, the address or the landlord,” Burek said. “But it’s not always that people have responses. So to have 400 responses already is way more than what you would usually find on Reddit.”

To encourage people to complete the survey, Cassidy said he messaged every student organization on campus and gave out free Celsius drinks on the Spine. On April 28, the VPSS office asked students on Instagram to fill out the survey. The post was viewed thousands of times and received 361 shares, according to Cassidy.

Abigail Connors ‘25, a first-year master’s student studying human rights, is a director of policy in the VPSS office. Last year, she and Cassidy met with several student organizations and local officials about the initiative. One of the initiative’s long-term goals is to collect and display responses from community members who are not students, making the project a citywide initiative.

Connors said the office also spoke with Amanda Finch, the assistant vice president and dean of students, earlier this year about the initiative and is planning to schedule another meeting with her.

Kristina Donders, the current VPSS and a senior double-majoring in mathematics and political science, said she hopes to reach out to other SUNY schools next semester and potentially expand the initiative.

The VPSS office has two interns in the geographic information sciences program who help make the website and survey user friendly. Rui Zheng, a senior double-majoring in environmental science and geography, created the address and landlord search feature within the interactive map. She said the initiative’s main goal is to increase renters’ awareness of bad landlord practices and prevent them from “signing themselves into potentially dangerous conditions.”

Meanwhile, Robert Sleight, a first-year master’s student studying geography, is conducting statistical analyses using the survey responses while creating user-friendly visuals.

“Finding off campus housing here can be a nightmare, and we’re no strangers to various horror stories we’ve heard regarding landlords,” Sleight wrote. “Our purpose here is to share the stories of the students in an environment that aims to create camaraderie among those with shared experiences and to arm potential tenants with the knowledge they need to choose housing that is fair and equitable.”

As many students begin considering their living options for next year, the VPSS office will continue encouraging students to fill out the survey and read other responses before signing a lease. The office plans to table around campus and display the survey on screens in the University Union.

“I do hope this project not only improves the lives of Binghamton students, but shows them they can make a difference,” Cassidy wrote in an email.

“There are a lot of problems out there, so I hope people learn that if they make friends, make community, and just do something, things will change,” he continued. “Everyday people doing small things change the world.”