It’s understandable why many are likely to assume the most helpful information that one could include in this guide would be revolving around the best way to retrofit your house or apartment to make the increased time indoors easier. Unfortunately, with many disappointed in how the year is going, there is one thing at the forefront of a lot of students’ minds— how to circumvent paying for an iron-clad lease we all were unwittingly compelled to sign months before the pandemic.

It has reached a point where therapeutic walks only seem to have the effect of preventing Vitamin D deficiency or a brief respite from how repetitive and similar each day is to the ones that preceded and follow it. The lack of options for a change of scenery and separation between the environment we attend class, study, network, interview and unwind in has days seemingly blended together. Unless you are lucky enough to book private study sessions at the Undergraduate Library, it’s become impossible to evade restlessness by going somewhere else to do all your work.

The cancellation of so many internships, people actually starting to use Tinder seriously at this school, constraints on what activities students are able to partake in and paranoia when your roommate was exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 are all valid reasons to forego spending a prime year of life in a dystopian fiction novel for creature comforts of staying in one’s hometown. So, what does one do about spending thousands of dollars they are not getting anything back from?

You must provide legal reasons to justify whatever language in your residential lease that would render your landlord to incur more costs than potential benefits for devoting time and resources to compel payment when so many are awaiting legislation to provide forgiveness on rental payments. Examples are nuisances from neighbors that your landlord fails to rectify for you, such as large gatherings you are worried can pose a threat to the health of you and those you live with. Others involve failing to make repairs, showing up unannounced and invading one’s privacy and inhabitable conditions a landlord might not have gotten around to fixing due to difficulties collecting everyone else’s payments.

If you are one of those people who get into conflict and say “Do you know who my Dad is?” or “My Dad is a lawyer,” now might be the only time where saying that would benefit you instead of making you look like a spoiled, privileged and unsympathetic person. Even if neglecting to pay rent does not give your landlord enough legal backing to justify an eviction claim or forgiveness of all payments this year, the aforementioned reasons can be used to reduce one’s debt owed by compensation rewarded for when the person you pay rent to fails to accommodate issues with the place you are living at. 

Noah is a senior is Business.

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