Factory’s alcohol policy change surprises residents

Many residents of the 900 Factory are surprised and angered by an email sent last week prohibiting drinking on the premises for those of legal age, a policy that some claim directly contradicts the housing complex’s lease.

During the summer, alcohol was fully and explicitly allowed for those over the age of 21.

“Moving to the factory was a decision my roommates and I made because of the purchase of Blue Square by the university,” said Dylan Harlow, a Factory resident. “We explicitly asked the management if alcohol was allowed and they said absolutely, as long as you are over 21.”

Item 37 of the Factory’s current lease states that “smoking, drinking of alcohol (for residents under the legal age limit) and the use of harmful and/or illicit drugs without a valid prescription is not allowed anywhere on the Apartment. . .  If occupancy includes minors, there shall be no alcohol or tobacco products allowed on the Apartment.”

The statement leaves an allowance for those of legal age to drink and possess alcohol so long as no minors are present. Some residents chose the Factory specifically because their lease explicitly allows those of legal age to drink in their apartments. Many of these residents were surprised and angered when the Factory issued the following statement in an email to its residents on Monday, August 29:

“Absolutely NO ALCOHOL is allowed anywhere on the property. This includes your apartment. It will not be tolerate[d]. There is no smoking on the property either.”

Rachel Romney, manager of the Factory, said the alcohol policy changed at the end of the spring. The change to the alcohol policy was included in the rules and regulations before May, she said, though she didn’t know the exact date. She said anyone who signed their lease after that time is legally bound by the new alcohol regulations.

However, the new regulations can’t be found in the lease that residents signed. It can be found only in a separate document entitled “Community Policies.”

A portion of the Factory’s lease does account for addendums and additions to the lease, stating that residents and their guests “must comply with all written rules and policies which we adopt for the Complex,” also ensuring that 30 days’ notice will be given. It states that the Factory management “can revise, amend, expand or discontinue the rules and policies at any time at our sole discretion by posting a notice on a bulletin board or other areas that we designate for notices to residents.”

Which, Romney said, includes the documents distributed with the lease.

“So there’s a basic Nelson Brothers lease,” Romney said, “and then it gets into rules and regulations of each property, because not everyone is going to have a bowling alley or a fitness center.”

Despite this, Factory-specific addendums have been included in the lease. In the lease itself, rather than the Community Policies (the rules and regulations Romney refers to), there are addendums regulating the fitness center, swimming pool and hot tub, amenities that are not included at all Nelson Brothers properties and therefore could be excluded from a general Nelson Brothers lease. There is no addendum to the alcohol policy in the lease.

That addendum exists solely in Community Policies, which several residents claim they never saw. Summer residents re-signed their leases — the same leases that explicitly allow drinking for those of legal age — with no knowledge or notification of any policy changes.

For many, the email sent on August 29 is the first notice of an alcohol ban that will be binding for the rest of their leases and enforceable immediately.

“Changing any leasing policy — regardless of whether it’s alcohol-related or tobacco-related — is still a violation of our rights,” said Jacob Poyner, a resident. “We signed an agreement at the beginning of the lease.”

Harlow and other residents are concerned that this policy change could open the door for others.

“Of course this raises the concern for other changes in our lease,” Harlow said. “If they feel they can change the policy for alcohol without written consent or notice, they probably feel they can change the policy for anything already explicitly laid out in our lease.”

And though Romney says she will honor leases as they were signed and that the addendum to the leases went through the proper channels, some residents are still left feeling cheated.
Today, more than four months after signing a lease identical to his first, Harlow found the legally-binding alteration of Community Policies that disallows alcohol at the Factory. Though he was initially unable to find it among the documents provided with his lease, he learned that it could only be found in Community Policies and read the four-month-old policy change for the first time.