Following a mad dash to sign leases, houses on Manning Street were taken for August 2023 by September 2022

As students settled into their houses this August, junior Mary Ruth Oster had her sights set on a home for the next academic year — The Lodge on Manning, a popular off-campus house on Manning Street. 

Oster had begun planning with Lodge’s current residents over the summer and contacted the landlady as soon as she returned to campus this fall. Unbeknownst to her, a group of Sigma Chi brothers had contacted the landlady two weeks earlier. 

“I wasn’t going to let anyone stand in my way,” Oster said upon finding out. “It was going to be our house and nothing was going to stop us.” 

Within a week, she solidified a group, submitted interest forms, and signed a lease on Sept. 3. 

“It was a matter of moving as fast as possible during the first few days of classes,” Oster said. “It was a flurry of phone calls between potential girls who were going to live there and girls who already lived there. The idea was to take it out from under them.” 

Oster and her group were the first to sign a lease for a house on Manning Street, but they were not the only ones to do so. In the first few weeks of the fall semester, students raced through Manning Street in a high-stress dash to secure off-campus houses on the coveted street for next year. Some students have even signed leases before receiving off-campus permission, which will be released next semester. 

“The weekend before classes, I started to get calls immediately,” said Becky Fultz-Roth who owns four homes on Manning Street, including Lodge. “It was like a wildfire. I was inundated with all kinds of emails and texts.” 

Fultz-Roth said she has never had students sign leases as early in the school year as she did this fall. By the end of September, leases for all four of her homes on Manning Street were signed. 

While Fultz-Roth assumed that interest was limited to her houses, after talking to other landlords, she realized the rush to secure off-campus housing early has been happening all down the street. 

“I have no idea why this is happening this year,” Fultz-Roth said. “We are all trying to figure it out.” 

According to Oster, Manning Street’s centrality to off-campus culture contributed to the scramble for houses. 

“I think a part of it is that everyone wants to be on Manning since it’s the best street — all the parties happen there and it’s right up by campus,” she said. “Another factor is that, as a junior, you want your senior year to be in a house that you’ve imagined you’d live in since freshman year, and for many that is a house on Manning.” 

At the heart of the mania were Graceland and Lodge, both houses owned by Fultz-Roth. 

“Manning has a pretty tight-knit community,” sophomore Lord Kirsten Lopez said while explaining the importance of the two homes. “You could see in the Sip of Manning last year after Taste of Manning got canceled. All the houses organized their own event.”  

Lopez said he was going for Lodge because a few of his friends had sisters in the house, but Oster was able to get it, in part due to her own connections to the house. 

“We knew all the girls who lived there previously and liked the energy and culture they created there — strong, independent women,” Oster said.  

It is not uncommon for students to attempt to “will” their homes to underclassmen. Some houses, such as Manning Stables, Fultz-Roth has always rented to Chi Omegas, while others, like Graceland, have usually housed independent women. 

Fultz-Roth said she tries to respect the traditions surrounding each house. 

“We know a lot of these students for a whole year,” Fultz-Roth said. “If they say, ‘Some of my friends are gonna take this house next year, we try to respect that.”   

According to Oster, having someone on the inside makes the housing process much easier. When Fultz-Roth didn’t respond to Oster’s request for interest forms immediately, she was able to get them from Emma Purdy, a senior who currently lives in the house. By the time Fultz-Roth texted Oster with the interest forms the next day, Oster already had them filled out. 

“Since Emma already lived there and knew what to do, it would have been much harder without her knowledge of how Becky is and what the process is like,” Oster said. 

According to Lopez, much of the drama surrounding the off-campus scramble this fall was caused by Oster’s nabbing of Lodge within the first few days of classes. 

“Behind everyone’s back, they went to Becky,” Lopez said. “Out of panic, we decided to start looking at Burt House, which then triggered a group of girls to try to get Graceland.” 

Junior Jonathan Abrantes, who currently lives in Graceland, said he came into the school year believing that he had the house secured for next year. 

“When we first moved in, we met with Becky’s husband. He told me that since I was the only junior I would have the house for next year and just needed to pick my house mates,” Abrantes said. 

During the second week of school, Abrantes discovered that a group of sophomore Chi Omegas were trying to sign a lease on the house. When he called Fultz-Roth about it, he was told he would be second on the list if anything happened. 

“One of their moms didn’t want to pay a deposit yet, so they pulled out. But we could have lost it just like that,” Abrantes said. 

According to Abrantes and Lopez, Fultz-Roth contacted their families and resident assistants before allowing them to sign leases. Fultz-Roth said she does get a little nervous renting to men, especially at Graceland, since the house comes fully furnished. 

“When I have a relationship with their parents, you know they are going to take care of the house even more,” Fultz-Roth said. “For the most part though, if you are going to Hillsdale College, you are going to be a respectable individual.” 

Within a few days, the housing crisis had roped in students who were not planning on signing leases until the spring semester.

Junior and Chi Omega Vivian Tork said she was enjoying living in her current home, Dog House, when the sorority found out four other groups were trying to take Stables during the second week of classes. 

“Becky said she would hold the house for us, but she could not hold it forever,” Tork said. “She needed a lease signed by the end of the week with a security deposit.” 

While Tork said Fultz-Roth was understanding during the process, and even gave some of the women extra time to send in their security deposit, it was still a stressful experience.  

“Even if individual members are not crazy about a certain house, you just have to make sacrifices for the sake of tradition,” Tork said. “You just feel like you are trapped because you don’t have time to explore other options.” 

Tork said she wishes students would respect off-campus traditions more, but also that landlords would be willing to hold off on signing leases until later in the semester. 

While Fultz-Roth usually does not like to sign leases until after the college has released off-campus housing permission in February, she felt comfortable doing so this year since she was renting mostly to rising seniors. 

Dean of Men Aaron Petersen is not aware of any factors that are driving students to sign leases earlier than normal but said that signing a lease earlier does not improve a students chance of getting off-campus permission. 

“Anyone who signs a lease does run a risk,” Petersen said. 

Even students who came into the semester looking to sign a lease were not prepared for the housing crisis to be this stressful. 

“It was really high intensity for a week for no reason,” Oster said. “I feel like we all kind of are being really dramatic about it and amped it up in our heads.” 

Abrantes said that being in what he described as the most popular house on campus inevitably made the housing process competitive. 

“When you’re on top, everyone hates you,” Abrantes said. “When you have Graceland, you are the bullseye on the target.”