Grab a snack and put your feet up....I'm going to tell you EVERYTHING which is going to take a while...

My husband and I moved into the complex in January of 2008. When we first moved in, we were excited to have 3 bedrooms and a nice LOOKING home since we had just moved from a ghetto 1 bedroom off of the I-17. We needed the extra rooms because we get my 4 step children every other weekend.
At first glance, everything seemed fine...until we did the walk-through to list any prior damage from the previous tenants. In the kitchens cabinets, there were left over roach traps with dead roaches still laying in the cabinets themselves. One of the two fire alarms wasn't working. There were paint stains all over the carpets throughout the apartment. There was visible wall damage in the hallway, about the size of a microwave...it was a huge dent that was sunken in and if you pushed on it with one finger, the whole wall would move. The counter tops were stained and chipped as well as not being properly secured. The bar portion of the counters was not and is still not actually attached to anything. If you bump it, the entire thing moves and you can visibly see that the nails are no longer secured into anything. There is a hole in our laundry room door along with only wooden floors in the laundry room, which by state law they are required to be concrete (Due to the shaking of the W/D and having possible leakage weaken the wood). The office had told US to check every single outlet in the apartment because they had been having electrical problems with other tenants. When we checked, some sparked, some didn't even work, and we had to rig certain ones to work with the light switch for that particular room. (Not sure how that was OUR responsibility''') The breaker didn't even work!! When we opened the dishwasher, there was standing water at the bottom with dead bugs floating in it from the previous tenants and there hadn't been anyone living in our unit for roughly a YEAR!!! We didn't have hot water for the first week that we lived here and couldn't go grocery shopping since our refrigerator didn't work BECAUSE of the broken breaker! The bathtubs were covered in dirt along with a lovely dirt film over everything. Within the first few hours, my husband and I were thinking that our previous 1 bedroom apartment was the Ritz compared to this hole.
Within a month or two of us living here, I was woken by someone screaming HELP HELP HELP! Come to find out, the units directly across from us and the parking lot had gone up in flames! NONE OF THE FIRE ALARMS IN THOSE UNITS WORKED!!! The only reason people realized what was going on was because of a young man walking by had seen the smoke and began banging on everyones doors telling them to get out! One family had to throw their children out the second story just to escape! We even made the news that day!
A week later, ANOTHER unit's laundry room caught on fire due to faulty wiring! They were within eyesight of our unit!
Within the next month or so, there were two other fires within the complex. The office said it was arsen, however anyone living in the complex will tell you it was FAULTY WIRING!!!
It is now June of 2009, over a year after the first units went up in flames and they are still underconstruction. That will either prove to you the laziness of the workers here or the great amount of damage done. In many people's opinions, they should've torn down completely and rebuilt, rather than trying to salvage what was left in the ashes. Also, by state law, apartment complexes are REQUIRED to have firewalls in between each unit...a CONCRETE divider. Anywhere that two different unit's walls touch, there is supposed to be a fire wall. As I was watching them reconstruct the building, I noticed there was NO FIREWALL to begin with. This places idea of a firewall is a piece of ply-WOOD sprayed with fire-retardent...NO JOKE!!! If you look at the roofs of the complex, you'll see some sort of divider in between each unit that is made to LOOK like a fire wall. I've watched the construction myself and have yet to see any kind of concrete fire wall! I hope to God that there is a fire marshall SOMEWHERE reading this!!!
About a month ago, I had come home around 2:ooam from visiting friends, my husband was already asleep, but I decided to watch some TV before bed. I turned on the overhead light that was attached to the ceiling fan and within 5 minutes, sparks began shooting from the fan base. Even after I had turned it off, FIRE began shooting across the room. I ran to the breaker and turned EVERYTHING off and that eliviated the problem until I made a very stern phonecall to maintainence. Once maintainence made time for us two days later (even though it was a fire hazard) the worker told me that the fan had been wired wrong the entire time we had been living there. If I hadn't been awake so late and turned everything off, we would've gone up in flames, no doubt in my mind.
Our first few encounters with the maintaince crew was a nightmare. One man was actually bragging to me about how drunk he was at that moment and how he LOVED drugs!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME'!'!'!' These are the people who we are supposed to allow in our homes and put our trust in to maintain a safe and healthy living space'!'!' Maintaince enters without permission even if we tell them NO PERMISSION to enter and it takes them days, weeks sometimes even MONTHS to respond to a maintaince call. I don't know about you but I don't want some drunkass crack head fixing my electrical problems or left alone in my home for ANY reason!
Don't plan on sleeping in past 7am...EVEN ON WEEKENDS! The landscapers like to start their leaf blowing right around 7am and blow the EXACT SAME spot for over an hour. I've even opened my window and yelled for them to quit...that was at exactly 7:23am one morning. But of course, the man didn't speak english so he just continued and I screamed into a pillow!
Our most recent problem is our steps leading to our apartment. One afternoon, I heard extremely loud banging outside along with the entire apartment floor shaking. I opened my front door to find two men hammering away at my steps! I had gotten NO notice of them repairing my steps what so ever. I didn't even make a call about it in the first place! I asked them who they were and what the hell they were doing and they looked up at me and just laughed. They said they were sent to fix every single step and that it would probably be a two day process. Nice huh' They fixed the ones only about a third of the way up and now the steps are uneven, cracked, wobbley and some don't even have brackets attached at the bottom! This happened two months ago and since then, I've been calling the office telling them to get someone over here to fix ALL of them since there were safer BEFORE the two men came to "fix" them. I even told them that my children are having trouble walking up and down them, my husband and I trip constantly and if one of us were to get injured on them, that they would have a serious lawsuit on their hands since I've been bugging them for months to come and fix them CORRECTLY!
Last month, the pool was closed for a week beacuse of "vandalism." They said that tile had been ripped off the side of the pool and that they were going to have it fixed ASAP. From 7am all the way to 9pm, we heard drilling, banging and God knows what else coming from the pool. I was somewhat relieved since it seemed that they were actually on top of something for once. Come to find out, when the pool opened back up, they had repaired only TWO tiles out of about 10-15 tiles ripped off. What the hell were they doing down there the whole time'!
Overall, this place is unsafe, unhealthy and a total scam! The office staff is rude and full of excuses! Our current rent is $861.00 but in my opinion, it should be somewhere around $450.00 because of not only the safety hazards but quality of life in the complex. I can't tell anyone enough to stay as far away from this place as possible! It's a nightmare from hell, and as I said before, even comes WITH THE FLAMES...for free!!! :)

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