We have a system for reporting maintenance requests in the UVA dorms. If a particular shower is clogged or a door alarm is wonky or a light is broken, you can simply file a request and maintenance will take care of it within two days. It is an impressive system and an advantage over living off-grounds where you are lucky if the landlord even responds to your email asking for repairs. But such a system is akin to the example in Chapter 6 in The Calculus of Consent where “any individual in the municipal group under consideration may secure road or street repairs or improvements when he requests it from the city authorities”.
In such a system, even a remote road traveled by only a few people would lead to repairs whose benefits are not shared evenly. Since only one individual is needed to take collection action to request repair and a student is rarely charged for the service, the expected external costs are high. There is an over investment because repairs for the smallest issues are filed, and the facilities staff size is likely larger than it would need to be. We likely see the external cost of such a system in the form of higher housing costs than would be if these expenses were charged to the individual rather than collectively. Nonetheless as someone with free housing as an RA, I am quite content with the current system.
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