Month: August 2021

The Trials and Tribulations of Tenancy Turnover.

Hi. My name is Claire. I’m Community Engagement Manager at the University of Birmingham, and it has been 4 weeks since my last Tenancy Turnover.

I jest.

But, really.

What an end to the Academic Year.

I know that all of my fellow Town and Gown practitioners across the lands will have felt it too. The ups and downs, all culminating in a student body who had been cooped up for most of the year desperate from some semblance of normality, being freed via the opening up of pubs and other venues. Just in time for half of them to contract corona virus or be in close contact with someone who had. And, just in time to have self-isolation periods that stretched right across that most odd of occurrences - tenancies that end on one day, and begin again on the next, thus sparking what would normally be the ‘borrowing’ of shopping trollies from every Aldi and Lidl (other supermarkets are available), frantic movement of goods and belongings from one street to another whilst working out what to do with that 10ft blow up Rick Astley and 3 person Tortoise costume, and how to get that red-wine-tinged-vomit-stain out of the cream front room carpet so that you don’t lose any of your deposit.

It’s been a hard year for students, landlords, Universities and, well, everyone really.

This culminated in the perfect storm that was the last 2 months of the 20/21 cohort, seeing:

• Students who had hardly lived with one another due to lock downs, suddenly having to navigate shared living and all that comes with it.
• Non-student residents who were scared stiff of the potential influx of covid-ridden students descending at various points from across the lands for one last ‘hoorah’ after the wash that has been the last 18 months.
• Communities who have not learned to live with one another over the last 2 years, suffering from a serious lack of cohesion which has made navigating the conflicts of mixed communities harder to resolve.
• House parties that have actually been garden parties because, covid regs, and therefore have been noise makers due to sound travelling.
• Large gatherings in public spaces, and the resultant community complaints adding to the ‘heat’ level of everything.
• A general sense of students feeling quite hard done by, which translated in some cases to a bit of entitled behaviour which, frankly, just got everyone’s backs up.
• MASS self-isolation over tenancy turnover due to a lag following the end of year parties, with many students unable to move, and some landlords trying to claim for extra days of rent, deep cleans, and even hotel costs for incoming tenants who were unable to move in to their new homes and so had nowhere to go.

It’s been a summer of firefighting to be honest and, whilst the mandated ‘debrief’ sessions have taken place, much of the learning will require more deep reflection than I have space for here, and so I will just offer a couple of things from Brum – stuff that helped, and stuff that we need to work on.

Stuff that helped:

• Great relationships with our local councillors
• Virtual Community Town Hall events that we launched 14 months ago to keep the community informed of what was happening came in to play strongly, and gave us an added layer of comms to use
• Fabulous co-working with the Guild of Students and the programmes that we fund but they run – such as community wardens
• A change in UoB regulations which allows us to take firmer action on persistent cases of ASB Off Campus.
• Massive support from the top down for the work going on
• UKTGA Town and Gown connections were invaluable in terms of support and shared expertise

Stuff that we need to work on:

• PRACTICAL detailed planning in conjunction with the local council in terms of how to rid the area of waste post-turnover in a strategic way.
• Dealing with the ‘bin divers’ who swoop in after students have put rubbish out in the correct way, and proceed to open up bin bags and strew waste everywhere, making look as though the students are totally at fault.
• Why, oh why, oh why, is there not a better solution that the utter MAYHEM of a 48 hour tenancy turnover period?!
• Preparations for welcoming back the 21/22 cohort who will, for the most part, have limited experience of shared living, and so will bring with them a host of support and education needs in order to maintain some level of community cohesion.

I know that the above might not be particularly deep thoughts, but if you read them and think ‘at least it’s not just me’, then my job here is done. I see you my friend. I feel your pain and I validate your frustration.

Onwards.

By Claire Bent

by Cooper Healey