UK proposes off-campus certification list

The recent debate over off-campus student housing has led to the discussion of an off-campus student office for UK.

The University Relations Committee met Tuesday morning, and Associate Vice President for External Affairs Tom Harris introduced the idea of a division within the Office of Student Affairs that would educate students about the responsibilities of living off-campus and provide a list of homes the Lexington Division of Code Enforcement certified as safe.

Through the recently proposed Student Housing in Partnership Program, landlords are asked to volunteer their properties for annual inspection. If a home were found to be up to code, UK would include that property on a list of “certified” housing that would be posted on a Web database for students to access when moving off campus.

“What we would be interested in doing is taking that information from SHIPP and code enforcement and posting that and create a different web site and maybe a list of certified properties,” Harris said. “That doesn’t mean a student can’t live somewhere else … but if a student decides ‘I want to live off campus,’ they can come to our Web site and look at this certified list.”

Even though the program would be voluntary, Harris hopes students would consider the list the office would provide when making their decision to sign a lease.

“Those properties that don’t meet those standards, hopefully students wouldn’t go to them because there may be concerns if a property owner doesn’t volunteer,” Harris said.

Beyond the list of certified properties, the office would aim to educate students about how to live among non-students without major problems.

“Educating students on how to be a good neighbors, what are your rights with landlords, your responsibilities, living in a community,” Harris said. “It’s educating (students) what is their role in the community and how to be a good citizen.”

The Student Housing Task Force initially formed two years ago to address the density issues of housing in student-populated neighborhoods. Harris said property owners building additions onto homes in order to house more students created many problems concerning noise and trash.

“When you have eight, nine, 10 kids in a single-family residence, you have 10 cars, 10 times the trash,” he said.

Despite some calling for more involvement from the university, Harris said UK is doing what it can to be engaged with the city, but limits exist on how the university can be involved with zoning concerns.

“A lot of the issues we are dealing with are city issues and city zoning,” Harris said. “ … that’s why we’re very engaged in the discussion and trying to help find solutions, but we’re fairly limited in what we can do on a lot of these.”

Interim Vice President of Student Affairs Victor Hazard said legal implications come into play whenever dealing with off-campus issues, which is why there are no definite plans for an off-campus student services office as of yet.Hazard said he wants to make sure the role of this position is clearly defined.

“(This) service would give us some grasp of properties that are out there that are safe and manageable,” he said. “I think there’s lot of education we need to be doing with our own students as to their responsibilities as citizens in the community.”

Hazard said he plans to look at benchmark schools and other schools in the state to see what type of programs they offer for off-campus student services.

As of now, about 35 property owners have volunteered to be part of the SHIPP program, Harris said, and code enforcement officers have expressed confidence they would be able to accomplish their role in the inspections.