The insiders Guide to Living Off-Campus
How do I find the right place to live? - What is a lease? - Does Riverside have city ordinances? - Tenant responsibilities, what are those?! - How can I be a good neighbor? - How do I obtain cable services? - Why was my electricity shut off? - What is renters insurance? - Does retrieving my trash cans count as community involvement? - What is a security deposits? - What is subletting and how do I do this? - Does my neighborhood have a neighborhood patrol program? - How can I get telephone and other utilities? - What about personal safety?
Confused yet? Fear not, check out our insiders guide to living off-campus. It has everything you need to know to having a successful experience. Click here to access our Insiders Guide. To download the guide to your desktop, click here.
Safe Bet Guide - Living in Perspective
There are so many options when it comes to finding a place to live off campus. Student Life has done a little leg work for you to help make the decision a little bit easier!
What is the UC Riverside Safe Bet Guide? It's a housing guide that puts life into perspective. The Safe Bet Guide is a list of the apartments showing all the vital information important to students who know nothing about living off campus. Apartments on the list are generally "safe bets". Access the Safe Bet Guide here, and see how each apartment stacks up.
Landlord Information Sharing
Well if your not going to live in apartments, make sure your choice of housing is a good one! Rental houses are a viable option for students looking for a more affordable alternative. Before you sign that lease check the Landlord Information Sharing Database.
How does the program work? The program is designed to provide students with a method for communicating with each other from year to year about their rental housing challenges and successes. The goals of the Landlord Information Sharing Program are as follows:
• To provide students with a constructive format to raise concerns about the quality of their off-campus housing in a manner that will lead to issue resolution.
• To provide a neutral context in which landlords can respond to and address students’ concerns.
• To provide a record of concerns raised and the manner in which concerns were addressed.
• To reduce the number of student concerns that ultimately go unknown, unresolved or escalate beyond the point that an amicable resolution is possible. In our experience, conflicts between students and their landlords often occur due to a breakdown in communication. We hope this program can promote more effective, constructive communication between students and their landlords.
Process
Any UCR student can fill out a Comment by clicking here. Students must clearly explain their concerns or issues on the form provided or by attaching a separate typed letter. They must use facts to describe the situation that is the basis for their documentation; they cannot simply provide an opinion of their landlord with no supporting factual basis. Student Life staff would also like to hear about positive interactions students have with their landlords. If students have positive experiences they would like us or other students to know about, they should send us a letter clearly explaining the interaction, using facts to describe the situation; they should not simply provide an opinion of their landlord with no supporting factual basis.
Access the Landlord Information Sharing database.