While some may come to Ames and find the apartment or living arrangement of their dreams, for others, it can be a nightmare.

There are multiple resources from Iowa State and the city of Ames for individuals seeking resources or help for unfortunate living conditions, broken lease agreements and more.

Every one-to-four years, buildings, including rentals and apartment complexes, go through an inspection process by the city of Ames, but sometimes these inspections, which look primarily for safety concerns, can miss things or happen too infrequently to find the issues as they come up.

Sara Van Meeteren, building official for the Department of Inspections, said individuals who have issues with safety in their place of living can contact the city and submit a tenant complaint form.

“If there is an issue and we are in the middle of that inspection process we will try and fix it within that process,” Van Meeteren said. “If it is outside that process, we will do what is known as a tenant complaint process … when they go through the process and submit the [tenant complaint form], they will also have to provide written proof of notification to their landlord, and that can be a letter, an email, a work order, a text message, something saying ‘I have notified the landlord, they are failing to resolve this issue.’”

Safety issues could include things like broken windows, faulty heating or cooling, something making a person sick or anything else regulated under the rental code. After receiving a call or complaint form Van Meeteren said they are able to “mediate” the situations.

Mediation will include a phone call from the city to the landlord asking for their timeline in fixing the situation, what they have done and what they will do. From there the city will work closely with the tenant to make sure progress is being made.

Not all safety issues can be solved through the city, however. Van Meeteren said issues with mold can be “tricky,” as it is not specifically stated or regulated in the city of Ames code, but they try to help with them as much as possible.

Other issues including an unclean apartment, missing appliances or furniture that are in the lease agreement, failure to return a deposit and other lease issues can’t be handled by the city.

“For all of those issues we refer students to student legal services, Story County legal aid or there is another company in Des Moines called Home Inc.,” Van Meeteren said.

Mike Levine, a legal consultant for student legal services, said a lot of what he deals with is helping guide students through issues with explaining their leases, returns of their deposits, repairs and subleases — in some cases student legal services can even represent students in court.

One area where students could be represented in court is in the case of eviction. As court hearings following an eviction notice come up quickly, Levine said it was very important for students to seek legal service quickly after being served.

Before students can be evicted, however, they must sign their lease, and in regards to this Levine said students should first understand it.

“It is important that students understand a lease agreement is a contract, and so they should be aware of the contents of it, and take the necessary time to review it in full,” Levine said. “A lot of times, a student can be involved in a rental with another student, and they need to understand the concept of joint and several liability.”

If four people are renting a place for a thousand dollars and the four students want to split the rent equally, Levine said most students would think their legal obligation would be $250, but that obligation can quickly change to the full $1,000 if one or more roommates fails to pay or moves out.

Another common lease issue Levine mentioned was a clause some leases have that says the tenant must notify the landlord thirty days in advance of moving out or the lease will continue on a month-to-month basis. If this is the case, students can find themselves paying an extra month of rent in a complex or rental they are not living in.

Understanding these details within a lease is important to students who don’t want to take an undue cost burden and is something student legal services can help students to understand.

Student legal services also provides a guide of ten rules to rent by, explaining everything a renter should know before signing their lease, and they also provide the renting laws of the state and the city of Ames.