Getting young people in Madison to pay attention to local politics sometimes feels like trying to convince a college freshman that there's a need for the reference section at the library. Five to ten years from now, you know they'll have gained the wisdom to admit you were right, but for now, there's just this impenetrable haze of apathy, and it starts with the phrase, ""Well, how does it effect me?""
Well listen up, you bunch of attention-deficit-ridden pups. Grandpa Weis has something to say, so put down your darn iPhones and knock off that infernal texting for 30 seonds. This effects you.
Nov. 15—if you've ever rented in downtown Madison, you've come to hate that date. On Nov. 15, if you haven't signed a lease that starts next August, your landlord has the legal right under Madison ordinances to bring people into your home and rent the place out from under you. Sure you've complained about it, but do you really realize what a raw deal you're getting, or that it would actually be really easy to change it?
The horror stories this law has caused are endless. After all, when you talk about the young people that inhabit the downtown, the near east side and the near west side, you're often talking about people who aren't sure what they're going to be doing with their lives one month from now, let alone 21.
Yet that's how far in advance most Madison renters are being forced to make a decision. After three months of your lease have gone by, you have to decide whether you want to renew it for another 12. Let's face it. After three months, you don't know whether that person you've lived with for 12 weeks is a lunatic or not. You don't know if you'll have landed that job, internship or study-abroad opportunity you're chasing. You certainly don't know how your house and your furnace are going to hold up in the dead of a brutal Wisconsin winter.
It's these kinds of horror stories the Madison Housing Committee, stacked with a number of big-business property managers, clearly hadn't heard when it voted 7-3 to kill a proposal that would make renting in Madison a more equitable proposition for the renter. But the proposal to move the rent-by date to the third week in January has new legs, and goes before the full Madison City Council Tuesday night, Sept. 21. And this time, if it's to succeed, there needs to be no shortage of voices to drown out the self-interested property managers from Steve Brown Apartments, Madison Property Management and other groups that will feebly argue a change will place some sort of burdenon them.
A group of students and young professionals is mobilizing to speakduring the public comment segment of the meeting, through a Facebook page you can find at http://www.facebook.com/event.phpeid=139288486115520&ref=mf. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m., but there's no distinct way to tell when this particular item will be taken up. It falls about midway through the agenda, after some other contentious issues, so the best bet is to show up early, register to speak, and then hunker down for the long haul with a newspaper or one of those darn iPhones you all seem to be so fond of. Nobody ever said democracy was easy.
The proposal to move the rent-by date to the third week in January has a realistic shot of succeeding, but it will take a number of swingvotes on the council to make it happen. If the city's Alders know people are paying attention to this issue and fired up about it, there's no way they'll want to be seen as toadying to the interests of big management companies.
- Dusty Weis
UW Journalism graduate
AM 1670 WTDY reporter
