Gustavo Martinez remembers the meeting about his lease at the Continuum clearly.
When the UF law student found out he’d scored a Summer 2013 internship with a Pompano Beach firm, he asked a staff member to honor a verbal deal they made allowing him to break his lease two months early for academic reasons.
“There was an awkward silence,” Martinez said. “She said, ‘Yeah, we can’t do that.’”
The Continuum, considered UF-affiliated housing, is touted as a premier housing option for graduate students, including those in law and master’s in business administration programs.
In a formal complaint filed with the attorney general’s office by a former resident, renters said staff at the complex verbally promised they could break their contracts early if they received internships. But as summer neared and internship-bound tenants like Martinez went to take the complex up on the offer, they were threatened with or hit with various penalties.
“Everybody was essentially told a different story,” Martinez said, adding that staff members said the request couldn’t be honored because the promises were made under the old management.
Now, six months after the wave of leasing complaints, the Continuum seems to have updated its leasing policy to prevent similar situations in the future. Administrators have been quiet about what the changes actually mean.
Alton Irwin, the spokesman for the Continuum’s Birmingham, Ala.-based management company, Capstone on Campus, wrote in an email that, in June, the management company “implemented a more flexible cancellation and termination policy, to address student residents participating in internships and Co-Op Assignments, as well as those leaving school for other reasons.”
He would not point out or comment on specific changes, but he referred back to the online policies.
The leasing policy posted on the Continuum’s website incorporates a caveat that allows for lease termination or cancellation due to “legitimate academic reasons.”
According to the policy, those reasons are defined as, “No longer affiliated with the University (documentary evidence is required),” “graduation,” “ineligibility to continue enrollment due to failure to meet academic requirements” and “registered co-op, internship, or residency outside of the area (more than 30 miles away from the University of Florida’s main campus).”
However, the policy does spell out a $1,000 termination fee if students choose to end a lease early even for “legitimate academic reasons.”
This Summer, the contradiction between the printed leases and the verbal agreements sparked contention among residents, but UF would not get involved with the University Avenue complex that sports the UF Housing and Residence Education logo on its website.
University spokeswoman Janine Sikes declined to comment about the leases in question, but she said the university was aware of one incident that occurred during the summer.
As for UF’s relationship to the Continuum, she said the university just “helps identify potential leasers.”
Sharon Blansett, assistant to the associate vice president for student affairs, distanced the university from the complex.
“The Continuum staff are responsible for all day-to-day operations, including leases,” she said. “Students who live at the Continuum are not signing a lease with the University of Florida.”
To address collective concerns, in May Martinez organized an email response he sent to Continuum management and UF Housing executives. The email was signed by 10 students.
He wrote that the lease flexibility in the event of an internship was a “strong selling point that was used and emphasized” by the complex.
“We were told that if we received an internship or externship we had to present a letter to the Continuum, signed by the university, explaining that we would be away for the summer doing an internship,” he wrote in the email.
At first, Martinez heard nothing back. So he sent a follow-up email to the Student Affairs office, emphasizing that students and parents were concerned. Within two hours, he said, he got an email from the Continuum saying he was released from his rent so he could go to the internship.
“It had to almost be coerced out of them,” said Martinez, who returned to Gainesville after the internship ended in July and moved into another apartment complex.
Meanwhile, Brad Willard, an attorney and former Continuum resident who filed the complaint, said it struggled to gain traction. He said the complaint didn’t get much further than the attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division. The scope of the problem wasn’t wide enough, and patterns of behavior must be larger than one apartment complex.
“It’s completely done, at least as far as they’re telling me,” Willard said.
A version of this story ran on page 9 on 12/2/2013 under the headline "Graduate students irritated with Continuum contradictions"
The community pool at the Continuum is empty Sunday evening. The student complex, considered UF-affiliated housing, recently faced resident complaints about verbal agreements and lease cancellations.
