Josh Benny lived in a rental property where any problem with the house became a hassle for him and his roommates.

Benny, a senior in graphic design from Hillsboro, and his roommates mowed their own lawn but were charged for 12 months of lawn care. When the renters asked for screens for the windows, they were given screens that either did not fit or were falling apart.

Workers fixed a broken pipe between the bathroom and kitchen but did not fix the hole they made in the wall that covered the pipe. An antiquated clothes dryer that added $15 per month to Benny’s rent constantly was broken.

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The trouble did not stop after the renters left. One of Benny’s roommates received a notice in the mail stating the tenants owed $300 for flea spraying in the apartment.

Our landlord claimed we had a pet and that he had to spray three times in our apartment, Benny said. None of us had an animal.

Landlord-tenant troubles have prompted Undergraduate Student Government to begin a system that provides complaint information about rental properties to students.

The system is a catalogue of complaint forms. Students can pick up the forms at the USG office on the third floor of the Student Center, fill them out and return them.

Landlords will be given the chance to respond to the complaint in a written form that will accompany the tenant’s complaint in the catalog.

The system is based on a similar program at University of Illinois. U of I’s plan has been in place for 11 years, and about 10,000 students use it each year.

Executive Assistant to the President Kristie Ayres and Housing Commissioner Christian Schoonover are encouraging any students who have complaints about their off-campus housing to register the complaints in the catalog.

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Some students will need to sign leases in February if they plan to stay off-campus, Ayres said. We want to have the catalog in use by then.

Schoonover said the catalog will be organized according to percentage of complaints for a landlord’s property.

If a landlord owns 2,000 properties and only has 10 complaints, they will not be put in the same section as someone with 20 properties and 10 complaints, he said.

The most important aspect of the catalog is to give students a better chance of picking a trouble-free rental property, Schoonover said.

What we are trying to do is empower the students to choose landlords wisely, he said.