By Yunjia Hou
March 23, 2020
You might have heard that Boston is one of the best cities for students, but you may not know that college students in Boston have a collective memory—a collective nightmare to be specific: the Moving Day madness around Sept. 1.
“I never want to move again in my entire life,” said Lynn Liang, a graduate student majoring in statistics at Boston College. “Packing, unpacking, assembling furniture and organizing rooms. These things are so exhausting.”
Liang arrived in Boston from China at the end of August 2018. She stayed in an Airbnb for a couple of days before moving to her apartment. As a new student, she had neither a friend nor a car that could help. She hired a professional, which cost her almost $300.
Moving Day is not only exhausting in Boston, but it’s chaotic. According to the City of Boston, about 70% of leases start on Sept.1, which means thousands of people move from Aug. 31 to Sept.2. Moving vehicles clog the streets, parking is a nightmare, and sidewalks are buried in trash and household items.
And many people, including me, have nowhere to stay for 12 hours, because we have to move out of our former apartments by midnight of Aug. 31 and we are only allowed to move in our new apartments after noon on Sept. 1. Also, we had to take all our furniture with us. It sucks.
There is no doubt that Sept. 1 is Boston’s annual chaos, but do we have a better option?
“Boston has an incredible student population, so Sept. 1 is a perfect day for students to move in,” said Roy Donnelly, a real estate agent who works with Kingston Real Estate Management in Brookline. “It’s just before classes start. If the move-in day is June 1, July 1 or Aug. 1, they have to pay for months they aren’t living there.”
Donnelly said it is really chaotic that the whole city moves at the same time, but it also helps people because they have the biggest pool of options when searching for an apartment. Tons of options are available during that period. However, if people are off the schedule, they might find the pickings pretty slim.
But Sept. 1 might be a weekday, so people have to miss work for the moving and the traffic on a weekday is worse than weekends. What if we use leases starting on the Sunday right before Sept.1 and move on that Sunday?
It doesn’t help a lot, said Donnelly. “People still have the issue that they have nowhere to go for 12 hours because landlords need time to do the clean-up.”
People don’t have to move on Sept. 1. They can move any time after the lease starts, like the weekends after Sept. 1, to avoid missing work and the chaos, Donnelly said.
Well, it seems we don’t have a better option than Sept. 1. But at least we should do something to curb the moving chaos.
The City of Boston has taken steps in recent years, including blocking off some common moving locations to allow for moving truck drop off, working with colleges on spreading out start dates for classes and repeatedly informing people don’t drive moving trucks on Storrow Drive due to the low clearance.
And I think it will make things much easier if landlords provide tenants with furniture. I was surprised almost all landlords don’t do that in Boston, but in China, where I come from, most landlords provide basic furniture, like a bed, table, chair and lamp. The majority of tenants in Boston are college students who only stay here for two to four years and students don’t purchase fancy furniture. It’s tiring and uneconomical for those students to buy furniture, assemble it, take it when moving, and dump it on the street or sell it cheap after graduation.
I know it’s hard for landlords to do that because tenants have different tastes in furniture and who should maintain the furniture is an issue that needs to be negotiated. But it’s a good way to reduce the chaos.
However, I find some people don’t really care about the chaos.
“I don’t care about the madness they have,” said Shane Xu, a landlord who owns several properties in Mission Hill, where a lot of college students stay in. “The more freaking out they are, the more likely they are to renew the lease, because they don’t want to move again.”
It sounds a little mean, but it’s an honest answer from landlords or rental brokers.
But Xu said he would help the tenants by letting them put their stuff in the basement of the house before Sept. 1, and then they don’t have to join the chaos on that day. That’s especially helpful to students from other states and international students who like to arrive in Boston one or two weeks earlier than start dates for school.
I feel people like the Boston College student, Lynn Liang, don’t care about the Moving Day chaos as well, because they decide to never move again. Even if it drives people crazy, some college students may take it as a memory in Boston. On the other hand, if the moving goes smoothly, it doesn’t feel like an “unforgettable” college experience.
Another reason people don’t really care about the chaos is that they know the moving day always sucks no matter how well prepared they are or when they decide to move.
Real estate agent Roy Donnelly told me the chaos will be particularly bad this year since many people are deferring renting June 1 rentals to Sept. 1 due to the coronavirus. And Sept.1 this year is a workday and an election day for Massachusetts state primaries.
So why don’t we enjoy Boston’s annual chaos when things get back to normal and keep one important thing in mind — stay calm.
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