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The concept of home becomes progressively more discombobulated with age. The room occupied now will be left behind for another, more convenient space in a more favorable town and home, as a notion, will transfer with the luggage.
It’s a vicious cycle every person of ambition is forced to accommodate and an especially daunting circumnavigation during its first orbit: The college years.
But when the hopeful University of Maine student takes to the Orono renters ads, they’re in for a disruption in the home-scavenger’s route — this town simply doesn’t have any vacancy for their ilk, not in areas of merit, anyway.
To the town of Orono, the UMaine student possesses the decency of an untrained dog. They are presumably irresponsible, unrefined and incredibly expensive. They make a mess, they bark all night and when one pack leaves, another set of strays claims the area.
Dirty mongrels such as us are fit only for specific locations — the pounds of Orono, per se. Leaving the confines is made practically impossible by the high fences of Orono ordinances.
And Orono, with its steadfast loyalty to its stunted rental unit registration program, indicates that the dog days are far from over.
As detailed in an A1 story in today’s edition of The Maine Campus, locations have been sectioned off by the town council as unavailable to college students en masse due to the restriction set within the aforementioned policy. The land use code insists that no more than three unrelated individuals are allowed to rent one unit together and a majority of the properties in the more quaint areas of Orono include four bedrooms or more.
Thus, certain college students are denied opportunities to discover a decent first or second home — no matter how well-behaved they may be — due to petty stereotypes regarding the so-called typical, rabid college lifestyle.
In this sort of red line situation, it’s not only students getting shafted with unfounded assumptions. The landlords and renters tend to receive the snout smack as well.
It’s not difficult to venture that a renter’s best investment comes when there are more tenants to subsidize. Not only are these rent agencies denied a chance to capitalize on the college town benefits of housing bigger groups of constantly replenishing clientele, but they have also been unfairly put in the position of parent regarding tenants’ behaviors.
All of these ordinances are clearly based in grandiose conjectures that seem to solely serve a cushy incentive for those sitting on the town council. It has been mentioned that improvements are to be made to the neighborhoods sanctioned as suitable for college students, yet despite all of the possible financing left over in the maintenance of the ordinance, no changes have been made.
It’s high time these top dogs lower their noses and embrace the location they chose to inhabit. Orono is, after all, a college town; it garners a great deal of business from the collegiate crowd and its top attraction is the university.
Even though college students may not be year-round inhabitants, when headed to Orono for another semester, they are homeward bound nonetheless.
