The Lantern — February 29, 2024

Up to code:

The rise in housing violations in the University District

By Nathan Mader Campus LTV Producer

Finding of-campus housing can keep students up at night. Living in it can be a nightmare. From unwelcome pests crawling throughout the kitchen to fre escapes that look like they’d crumble with one step, code violations have been an ever-present issue plaguing the University District, and more im

show how unclean, dangerous or mismanaged some of-campus housing is.

A Lantern investigation of Columbus Building and Zoning data found housing code violations in the University District are just over 14 times higher than they were three years ago.

In fact, the 373 violations cover ing the frst nine months of 2023 are roughly equal to a total of 379 vi olations reported over nine years, stretching from 2013 to 2021.

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CAMPUS

Celebrezze said the dramatic rise in housing code violations is due to factors such as increased stafng, the return of students post-COVID-19 and people being more aware of infractions.

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Anthony Celebrezze, deputy director for Columbus Building and Zoning Services, said a variety of factors could have contributed to the sharp increase in violations.

Among these reasons were a more proactive philosophy taken by code enforcement after the ofce switched city departments, the return of students and full stafng post-COVID-19 and new University District initiatives.

Housing violations fall under Title 45 of Columbus’ Code of Ordinances, and the system generally starts from complaints called in through the 311 Customer Service Center about an address experiencing potential infractions.

From there, code enforcement ofcers are sent out to inspect complaints and report them in the proper categories, as well as notify tenants or landlords of the time they have to correct the issues.

Students worried about their current

or future housing do have several Ohio State and city resources available to address or report concerns. However, that doesn’t mean the issues always go away.

Patrick Brady, a ffth-year in chemical engineering, and his 2023 graduate roommate Thomas Guirguis, live in a University Village apartment. On Nov. 27, 2023, they called maintenance after fnding cockroaches in their kitchen.

“Most of them were in the kitchen, and I think the frst night it was the worst. That was before we sprayed anything,” Guirguis said. “They were under the kitchen sink. They were coming out of this crack under the kitchen sink, and they’d just go into the vent along the other wall of the kitchen or under the stove, and they eventually made their way to the fridge and other places throughout the house.”

Guirguis said cockroaches were found in the ceilings, refrigerator, bathroom and his bedroom. He, Brady and another roommate went

Brady and another roommate went to a diferent apartment to spend the night, but the other roommate refused to sleep in the apartment for a few extra days. Despite maintenance spraying down the place, Guirguis said it could’ve still taken seven to 10 days for them to fully disappear.

“I know most of the workers here are nice and they care,” Brady said.

As of the day after University Village sprayed their apartment, Brady said they hadn’t seen any more cockroaches. Brady said despite the cockroach issue and what he feels has been poor management, they’ve had far worse experiences with other companies.

“Specifcally, regarding pest management, we have both preventative and reactive steps to mitigate these issues,” Todd Jessup, general manager of University Village Apartments, said in an email. “First, we work with a local third-party pest management company that takes proactive steps [multiple] times a week to prevent pests from entering our properties. Sometimes, even with these preventative measures, we’ve seen pests fnd their way into our properties. In these cases, our pest management partner is dispatched to our apartments as quickly as possible to respond to the specifc issue at hand.”

Why it’s happening

Housing code violation data from the Columbus Building and Zoning Services was collected for area codes 43201 and 43202 — heavily composed of the University District and other student housing — and is

broken down by record type, record category and record subtype, with each more detailed than the last.

Housing in the University District is 78% renter-owned, according to data from the 2022 ESRI Business Analyst. In the past decade, area code 43201 saw 75% of the total violations compared to 43202 despite only being 22% larger by area with 50% more housing units, according to the 2020 census.

Celebrezze said violations are labeled properly under each category and by separating the data by these classifcations, it can be analyzed to fnd which infractions are the most common each year.

Not all complaints result in violations. Cockroaches and other pests were a common complaint but comprised only fve of the nearly 900 total violations in the past decade.

Another record category, “weeds and solid waste,” is more to blame for an initial jump in violations that occurred between 2020 and 2021.

Celebrezze said code violation duties were transferred from the Department of Development to Building and Zoning Services in 2021. The change in philosophy followed.

“The mayor decided that it made more sense to have that regulatory function be with Building and Zoning, since we’re already a regulatory operation, whereas the Department [of] Development is more into trying to create jobs and businesses and that type of thing,” Celebrezze said.

MOLLY GOHEEN | MANAGING EDITOR FOR DIGITAL CONTENT

THOMAS GUIRGUIS | UNIVERSITY VILLAGE RESIDENT Thomas Guirguis and Patrick Brady were forced to discard all the food in their fridge after sufering a cockroach infestation in their apartment.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2

Soon after the switch, Building and Zoning started Monday trash sweeps in the University District after home football games, Celebrezze said. Enforcement ofcers would walk down streets and alleys looking for cans, cups and other excessive amounts of garbage in yards and would return Tuesday with

To further help with the trash issue of campus, the University District Organization — a community organization dedicated to improving life in the neighborhoods of the University District — has started multiple programs.

Nora Gerber, executive director of the UDO, said trash is a unique problem to tackle because there’s so much of it. She said one idea that came to

orders to clean up within 48 hours.

“Unfortunately, they tended to be the same addresses, but eventually over time, those landlords worked with their tenants. Most of them, they start sending their own staf out to clean things up on Monday and charge their tenants,” Celebrezze said. “The tenants learned they’re either gonna get charged for it, or they were going to have to clean by Sunday.”

Celebrezze said when the program started, they initially were writing up 80 to 100 citations each sweep, but through working with property owners and other stakeholders at community roundtables and other educational opportunities, only about a dozen are written up per sweep, which also occur less frequently.

In 2021, weeds and solid waste made up 92 of the total 136 violations, and that number fell to 26 in 2023. Celebrezze said the initial citations may have been warnings instead of full violations, but he couldn’t say for certain.

life was the Trash to Treasure project, which commissions artists to turn nearby dumpsters into their canvases.

“This does two things for us that we’ve seen. One, it reduces the vandalism on dumpsters,” Gerber said. “Usually, it subconsciously encourages people to actually put their trash inside of the dumpster instead of around it so that because they see something beautiful, and they respect it a little bit more.”

The Can Fairy project is another UDO initiative. Gerber said it was introduced because of the amount of garbage found by code enforcement’s trash sweeps and because other people, such as can collectors and those without houses, were often on porches and lawns cleaning the mess themselves, leading to safety concerns.

“We’re going to be doing the collection and who’s doing it, so that’s safer,” Gerber said. “But then, too, instead of putting it on the lawn, you fll the box, you put it in the box, not your lawn. It reduces the litter, it changes the habit,

and then when we collect those bags every Monday morning, we take them to a recycling drop-of location and they get diverted from the landfll.”

Sarah Swasey, a fourth-year in political science, complained about trash violations at her of-campus house on Indianola Avenue, along with a list of other poor housing conditions. She said a dumpster behind her house often overfows, leaving her and her roommates to take the blame.

“That dumpster is used by pretty much half the street, and we live around fraternities and all that,” Swasey said. “So, when they throw away their thousands of cans from parties, it overfows our dumpster.”

Swasey said they were fned once by the city, which was handled by her real estate company, Hometeam Properties, but they have received numerous other warnings and citations threatening further fnes and even jail time.

“Over the summer someone threw away their couch, but they just left their couch in front of the dumpster, and then we got a notice for it, and it’s not our couch,” Swasey said.

The largest jump in code violations happened in 2023, as the total tripled from an already increased amount in 2022. Last year’s data saw a total of just under 400 violations in the frst nine months, which is 12 times larger than the yearly average from 2013-2020.

The jump occurred mostly in the “general” record category, going from 39 incidents in 2022 to 167. This category includes a wide variety of small structural or common infractions.

University Area Commission chair Doreen Uhas-Sauer said one of the reasons for the large jump in recent violations was the COVID-19 pandemic. She said it caused students — a large portion of the of-campus population — to leave the University District. The UAC is a volunteer, democratically-elected commission in Columbus that advises on zoning, planning and other neighborhood civic matters, according to its website.

“We did not necessarily see students in the neighborhood because they were working remotely at home. They literally abandoned the area,” Uhas-Sauer said. “It was like living

in a ghost town. So, there’s a fuctuation there where people would not have been calling [violations] in.”

Celebrezze agreed with this, saying the post-pandemic transition caused a lot of changes for code enforcement through Building and Zoning Services. This included having code enforcement ofcers out on the job fve days a week as opposed to half that during the pandemic.

The jump in violations for 2023 can also be attributed to stafng, according to Celebrezze, as he said this was the frst time in many years that code enforcement was up to full stafng. In addition, he said the of-campus area has the most code ofcers, and what can sometimes be four or fve personnel has since jumped to 10 or 11.

“We ended up adding to that. We’ve got two teams called PACE — Proactive Code Enforcement — and these are folks that have been doing code enforcement for many years, and they’re kind of like our specialists. We send them into areas, so we inundated the area,” Celebrezze said. “That would account for a lot of the big jumps in the numbers in ‘23.”

Uhas-Sauer said students can also be at fault for causing violations, meaning they should protect themselves by understanding what hazards they can cause and how it impacts their safety.

“Students violate the code themselves. They bag a fre alarm or they do block an exit with a bed,” Uhas-Sauer said. “Just the kinds of things you may not realize are contributing to your own lack of safety. Upholstered furniture on porches — we’ve had severe fres in the university area because of that.”

Trash is another violation often caused by students, and ensuring smoke detectors are functioning with charged batteries is another potentially life-saving responsibility of renters.

In addition, Gerber said the quick turnaround of students in of-campus housing can discourage both parties from maintaining their properties. She said anyone indicating a lack of care and respect incentivizes others to do the same.

NATHAN MADER | CAMPUS LTV PRODUCER Garbage from overfowing dumpsters and college parties continues to be a large cause of housing violations and resident complaints.

“Maybe you would throw a party at your parent’s house, but you would defnitely clean up after because your mom, dad, parents, grandparents — whoever — would expect you to respect the house,” Gerber said. “I think if you have a landlord that doesn’t care about the property, it doesn’t make you want to care about the property, which is sad in a way because a lot of these homes [that] are built in the early 1900s are really cool and are really gorgeous inside.”

Gerber said she believes the landlords who don’t care about a property are likely the ones who see the most violations. Landlords who do care and show that through their work are more likely to see that attitude refected by tenants.

The Lantern reached out to Swasey’s landlord, Hometeam, who did not return requests for comment. The Columbus Apartment Association also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“There are ways in which you can intrinsically show that you care about your apartment and your neighborhood,” Gerber said. “We hope that that has a ripple efect for people that are visiting, that they want to throw their trash away properly, or when they do come and live here, that they have a sense of place and community in that they really love it.”

Swasey said she feels having students in the University District rent for only a year or two can cause a lack or delay of care from landlords with their properties, and she feels she has been impacted by this.

“I think there [are] a lot of times where they’re expecting that the students living in these houses are going to be immature and breaking stuf, and I do know people like that that just don’t take care of their house,” Swasey said. “It’s hard because when you’re genuinely having an issue, they might just assume that you’re just a college kid that isn’t taking care of things.”

Moving out and moving on

Celebrezze said there are many outside factors causing the number

of violations to present as rising, yet he believes the actual total number of infractions is far more consistent.

“It’s more of the students knowing what their rights are and what they’re supposed to be living in. I mean, I went to Ohio State, and there’s always been violations of these. Looking back on my time there and knowing the code violations, there’s always interior and exterior stuf going on,” Celebrezze said.

Violations themselves can be expensive and bring unseen costs, and Brady said their infestation forced them to throw away all their food after cockroaches found their way into the fridge. Guirguis said cooking meals was also out of the question.

experience possible at University Village,” Jessup said in an email. “In addition to our maintenance team, we have partnerships with several third-party vendors with an array of expertise who help us maintain our facilities for our residents. We also work closely with university housing and city inspectors to make sure we adhere to all housing standards for students who are living in our University Village properties.”

University District housing is already expensive, often having rent prices a couple of hundred dollars over the Ohio average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Uhas-Sauer said students may have to settle with worse housing options to save on a few bucks.

“It was just inconvenient because we didn’t want to touch anything in the fridge, and obviously we didn’t want to cook in our kitchen, so we’d have to order food every day for every single meal,” Guirguis said. “So, it’s just very expensive.”

University Village, Guirguis’ landlord, said the safety of their residents is their top priority, and rectifying maintenance requests is of utmost importance.

“Our maintenance team strives to give each of our residents the best living

“With the landlords, I should expect better because they’re making the proft, and if they’re not keeping up their property, they’re doing it on the backs of students,” Uhas-Sauer said. “Afordable housing for students is so lacking, but that doesn’t mean you have to live in the basement of somebody’s house. I mean, I lived in garage apartments, types of things, too. It really is the responsibility of the landlords legally to have safe housing, keeping it afordable.”

Uhas-Sauer said new develop -

ments coming into the area are also too expensive and luxurious for the demand, leaving many students with fewer options to choose from.

If students are having issues with their housing, Frank Kremer, the chief counsel of the civil team at Student Legal Services — a third-party nonproft entity contracted by Ohio State — said his team can help students deal with property and landlord troubles.

One service it ofers is lease reviews, which Kremer said is always a good idea to use before signing.

“Before you sign your lease, you can bring it to us,” Kremer said. “We will sit down, go through it with the student and make sure they understand fully what they’re signing and what their rights are, what the landlord’s obligations are, etc.”

Student Legal Services is also able to help students with problems involving unaddressed repairs or violations in their housing, and Kremer recommends students document these issues with photos, videos and written evidence if they persist.

To report housing code violations to the city, submit a request through the 311 Customer Service Center or call 614-645-3111.

Celebrezze said fnding and fxing more violations can be a good thing since it helps them keep Columbus at a safer and higher standard.

“I guarantee you, I could fnd a code violation at every single property of the city of Columbus, including my own, but that’s not what we’re looking for. It’s not what our goal is,” Celebrezze said. “Our goal is to fnd the worst in areas where people complain about it, and then go out there and try to help that property owner bring that property up so that it’s not a drag on the neighborhood.”

NATHAN MADER | CAMPUS LTV PRODUCER

Grafti made up 51 of the almost 900 housing violations from 2013 to 2023 and is a common complaint to the city, especially if it contains ofensive language or imagery.

ARTS&LIFE

Palette Pals connects Ohio State students and Columbus residents with developmental disabilities through art

Annual Unchained OSU fashion show returns, depicts human tra cking through

By Arianna Smith Editor-in-Chief

Despite her prior involvement with social advocacy, the reality of human trafcking didn’t sink in until Tanisha Dhankhar heard Kim Flynn’s life-altering story.

Three years ago, Dhankhar sat in Room 034 of Lazenby Hall as Flynn, founder of Overcomers on the Move — an anti-human trafcking organization — recounted the harsh realities of human trafcking just a few feet away from her, with emotion spilling through each word.

Flynn emphasized that she and others alike are not victims, but overcomers — a message Dhankhar, a third-year in neuroscience and president of Unchained OSU, has cherished ever since.

Unchained OSU is an Ohio State student organization dedicated to spreading awareness of human traffcking through its annual fashion show, from which all proceeds are donated to the She Has A Name: Strategies for Success Scholarship. Though the organization aims to touch the broader community, Dhankhar said its impact is also deeply personal.

“You understand it much more when you have an in-person setting and you get to actually hear them speak about their experiences,” Dhankhar said. “It just makes the whole gravity of the situation be like, ‘OK, what I’m doing actually matters. I have an overcomer in front of me, ready to help me in order to help others who were like her at once.’”

This year’s show — set for Sunday at 6:15 p.m. in the Great Hall Meeting Room in the Ohio Union — is focused around seasons. Each season corresponds with one of the three stages victims of human trafcking endure:

innocence, violence and restoration.

“We have summer for innocence, then we have winter for violence and then we have spring for restoration,” Dankhar said. “And for each of these themes we usually leave it up to the designer in terms of [inspiration] and creativity and what they think embodies these certain themes that we give them.”

Sydney Peters, one of this year’s designers for Unchained OSU, was assigned to winter and said she played with the season’s darker col-

or palette to channel internal pain.

“And that section itself, winter, is kind of standing for being in the depths of the human trafcking story, that narrative,” Peters said. “It’s kind of telling their story of [their struggle], before they’re actually out of it and getting help.”

Peters said she has channeled her past tumultuous relationship into her sketches, incorporating both feminine and masculine details.

“I want you to see this ethereal wom-

art

an who is full, is whole, is confdent, but also has been through things and has that deep strength underneath, and really just feel like you’re seeing the full image altogether,” Peters said.

Avani Bhalla, a third-year in fashion and retail studies, is a returning model for the show and said she hopes to portray survivors’ stories on the runway through her powerful strides and facial expressions.

“It’s super fun to walk down the runway, but at the same time it is very emotional, and I do try to think about the survivors and the victims of human trafcking when walking or when even just preparing for it,” Bhalla said.

After every show, Bhalla said she is excited when talking to audience members, but intentionally takes time to refect on the event’s core messages.

“I’ll go home and just kind of sit there for a little bit and I’ll just think about [it], it gives you a lot of perspective on life in general and how precious it is and how feeting it is and how we’re very lucky to be the ones helping to represent it,” Bhalla said. “But there are a lot of people where that’s their lives, that’s their every day.”

Bhalla said she is grateful to be able to make a positive change through something she loves.

“At the end of the day, I can just hope that I can shed a little bit of light on something that really does deserve to have a lot more attention, and maybe — hopefully — help somebody’s life,” Bhalla said.

More information about Unchained OSU’s 2024 fashion show, including how to reserve tickets, can be found on Eventbrite. Organizers encourage Ohio State students to donate $10 for admittance, while non-Buckeyes are advised to give $15.

COURTESY OF DAVE TOTH

Participants of Unchained OSU model the designs presented at the 2023 annual fashion show.

Palette Pals produces creative opportunities for Columbus residents with developmental disabilities

By Olivia Riley Lantern Reporter

KaitlinHerman, a second-year in biochemistry, is no stranger to volunteering. While attending Highland High School in Medina, Ohio, she often collaborated with groups like the Special Olympics and Empower Sports — organizations that provide opportunities for athletes with various physical and cognitive disabilities.

When Herman got to Ohio State, she decided to start her own volunteer-based initiative. But, instead of athletics, she wanted to focus on a diferent vessel for social change: art.

In August 2023, Herman established the student organization Palette Pals with friend and fellow Buckeye McKenna Lewis. Herman, who now leads the group, said Palette Pals integrates Ohio State students and individuals with developmental disabilities to foster an environment of support and empowerment for those involved through painting.

“We hope to give new creative experiences to those who might not have them outside of work or school,” Herman said. “It gives Ohio State students an opportunity to meet all new types of people, while also giving those people chances to connect with each other.”

To accomplish its goal of sparking meaningful relationships, Palette Pals hosts painting events every Tuesday evening at West Central School — located in Franklinton at

1481 W. Town St. — from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. At these events, the group often has recurring participants who bring their entire families, Herman said.

“We’re not short on volunteers, thankfully,” Herman said. “A lot of mine and McKenna’s friends come, but we’re still always looking for more to be involved.”

Herman said she and Lewis, a third-year in molecular genetics and Palette Pals’ secondary leader, began the process of launching the organization in June 2023.

Lewis said participation in Palette Pals is personal for her. The close relationship she has with her uncle Brian Burgdorf, who has Down syndrome, inspired her to get involved.

“His favorite thing to do is paint,” Lewis said. “Seeing how he is able to express himself through art means a lot, and I fgured there would be other individuals out there who feel the same happiness he does when painting.”

When it came to securing a faculty adviser, Herman said she contacted Rebecca Sallade, who had previously been her adviser in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sallade, also a 2017 Ohio State alum, said she jumped on the opportunity almost immediately. She said it was an easy choice, as she was already familiar with Herman’s skill set and appreciated the club’s premise.

“I liked the idea of incorporating equity and inclusion along with artistic outlets to connect with community members,” Sallade said.

Sallade said the group wouldn’t be where it is today if it weren’t for Herman and Lewis’ hard work during the initial planning process.

“From the idea in June to the paperwork and the approval, they worked really hard to get it ready by autumn 2023,” Sallade said. “Within a couple of months, they had built the whole org[anization] from scratch.”

At the end of the day, Sallade said she hopes more people embrace the opportunity to engage with Palette Pals and its continued “paint nights.”

“I just hope this group can be mutually benefcial to not only the participants but to the student volunteers as well,” Sallade said. “There’s a million and one ways to get involved

with volunteering on campus, but this one defnitely has something special.”

More information about Palette Pals can be found on its Instagram page.

Enjoying The Lantern?

COURTESY OF MCKENNA LEWIS

Some of the artwork created by Palette Pals participants, as seen on Jan. 23, 2024.

Ticket prices reduced for 2024-25 season

First men’s basketball ticket price reduction in over 20 years

By Noah Weiskopf Lantern Reporter

The Ohio State University Board of Trustees has approved a reduction in men’s basketball tickets for the 2024-25 season as of Feb. 22.

Ticket pricing for individual premier games, as well as season tickets, will be lowered by a range of $1 to $102, but the cost of exhibition games will remain the same.

20 years that Ohio State has uniformly lowered prices across all

seating zones in Value City Arena at the Schottenstein Center.

Ohio State has experienced a decline in ticket sales over the past four years, leading to the decision to lower the prices starting next season. Brett Scarbrough, Ohio State senior associate athletic director of ticketing and

premium seating, said the main reason behind the price decrease was the grad-

chased over the past several seasons.

“The main factors probably are over the past four seasons, we have seen a pretty steady decline in the number of season tickets that are being purchased,” Scarbrough said. “So basically, from the [20]19 season, we’re down about 1,000 season tickets overall, and that’s been a steady 5 to 7% decrease year over year, that’s probably the main factor.”

Since the 2018-19 season, the men’s basketball team has gone 114-78 and 57-63 in Big Ten play. The Buckeyes haven’t made it past the second round of the NCAA tournament in that span.

Scarbrough said the goal of the ticket reduction is to grow the attendance, sell more tickets and ultimately bring more fans to the Schottenstein Center to watch Ohio State men’s basketball.

“Everybody is competing within Columbus people’s discretionary dollars when it comes to what they’re going to spend money on entertainment,” Scarbrough said. “We want to make sure that we’re in the mix and I think that this move is going to place us in a

back in the other direction and start growing those sales and attendance.”

The Buckeyes have two remaining home games this season, against Nebraska and Michigan, respec-

Nebraska on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

FS1 will televise.

2024-25 MEN’S BASKETBALL TICKET PRICING

MEN’S BASKETBALL

CALEB BLAKE | PHOTO EDITOR

The Ohio State men’s basketball team locks arms ahead of its 79-76 double-overtime win against Maryland at Value City Arena at the Schottenstein Center Feb. 10.

SPORTS

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Ohio State men’s basketball ticket prices drop for 2024-25 season,

BIG TEN CHAMPIONS

No. 2 Buckeyes defeat Michigan 67-51 to clinch regular-season conference title

By Jayla Vanhorn Asst. Sports Editor

The Buckeyes are Big Ten regular-season champions.

The No. 2 Ohio State women’s basketball team (25-3, 16-1 Big Ten) clinched

the conference title Wednesday in its defeating Michigan (17-12, 8-8 Big Ten) 67-51 in Value City Arena at the Schotseason conference title since 2010.

The Buckeyes won a share of the

Big Ten regular-season championship in 2021-22 with the Iowa Hawkeyes, and its 2017 and 2018 championships were vacated due to self-reported recruiting and policy NCAA violations.

With the Iowa Hawkeyes and Indiana Hoosiers each having three

in-conference defeats, the Buckeyes’ victory against the Wolverines knocked both teams out of contention and the Buckeyes back into the championship column. VISIT

CALEB BLAKE | PHOTO EDITOR

Graduate forward Rebeka Mikulasikova lifts the Big Ten regular-season championship trophy at Value City Arena at the Schottenstein Center Wednesday.