ROOMS WITH A PHEW

University or college students may have a tough enough time finding a
place to live let alone try to find a place where roommates aren't
party animals.

This year, students who want to live with roommates who follow an
alcohol- and drug-free lifestyle have a new resource to help them
find suitable accommodation.

Erin Mooney and her business partner Kristin Stevenson, have launched
a website called Sober Move to help students who abstain find
roommates with the same values. The idea for the website came to
Mooney when she helped a friend, who was living with a roommate in an
apartment, find a new living arrangement with roommates who preferred
to stay away from alcohol and drugs.

"I was searching all of the classified ads. I just thought it was a
lot harder than it needed to be to find those people. You had to go
through every single ad and scan it," Mooney said. "I just thought it
would be nice if (such listings) were all in one place."

The website at www.sobermove.com works like an online classifieds and
people can list and browse vacancies free of charge. By simply
changing locations, listings for cities across Canada can be accessed.

Mooney founded the website about seven months ago and she and
Stevenson, who live in Edmonton, launched it two months ago. The
majority of listings are from Calgary and Edmonton but Mooney hopes
listings across the country will grow as the word gets out. So far
the feedback has been positive.

"I do get quite a few e-mails back saying 'That's a really great
idea,'" Mooney said.

The resource might be the most valuable for students who live in
off-campus housing since universities and colleges usually try to
create compatible housing arrangements for students who want to live
in residences.

"We match strangers with strangers. None of them usually know their
roommates so we match their attributes," said Heather Mirau, director
of food, housing and conference services at the University of Lethbridge.

Students who apply to live in residence are asked about their study
habits, level of social activity, extracurricular interests, age,
year of study, gender and their preferred type of accommodation,
whether apartment, dormitory and whether they want a substance-free floor.

"We can get a very good start to our matching on those attributes
alone," Mirau said.

House rules are outlined in a handbook and a dispute-resolution
process is in place if needed, although Mirau said it's only used on
occasion. However, sometimes people still decide to move and the
university will accommodate such requests if an exchange is possible.