The Fountains at Moorpark is at the very bottom of the 13-grade BBB scale. See for yourself:

http://www.santabarbara.bbb.org/Business-Report/Fountains-at-Moorpark-92002812

If you really need to know more, then, well, you asked for it.

I have lived here for near 8 years. You should be impressed. (But to be honest, I cannot afford something better, the apartment is close to where I work. Besides, The Fountains and its more expensive sister facility across the street monopolized the market in Moorpark.)

You will find the complex pet-friendly, but tenant-hostile. Forget the dog pooh everywhere, roaches, rodents, and a couple of other nuisances, all minor by comparison. Beware of the vermin in the Management Office! (Hey, do you want me to be misleadingly polite or bluntly accurate')

Never great, the maintenance service has become outright terrible after Sares-Regis Group took over in early 2009; we've been waiting 7 months (!) for some basic repairs. Countless phone calls, visits at the Office in person, and letters would have no effect. Count on the Office's high-handed attitude once you move in--don't get fooled by the insincere broad smiles before you sign the 70-plus-legal-page-long contract. When signing, read carefully, as at places the doc is heavily biased against the tenants. The number of pages grows with every passing year. You sign the contract anew at every lease renewal, i.e., twice a year.) Conscientious, friendly, or reliable candidates seem to shun the Administration office or never last longer than a few months or even weeks. Expect the dictatorial tone of the ever changing regulation and rules, only fragments of which will be left at your door. Expect reading embarrasing notes from the Office to your neighbor found on your doormat; expect dirty and noisy pools and spas with non-tenants in them; expect frequent inspections of your apartment, balcony and garage, all preceeded by threatening notes. Keep your expectations high, my friend.

Here, no Office employee acepts personal responsibility or takes pride in her work. The rules at the Fountains are created by some enigmatic "them," a Higher Power before which, it is implied, the tenant must cringe and crawl. You won't be given a complete code by which a tenant should live at the Fountains. Yet rest assured. Right after you break one of the Sacred Secret Esoteric Rules and Regulations, the thing will be explained to you in a way that will leave no doubt in your mind as to what an ingrate and a bad community member you are.

Expect regular rent hikes, but not a refund of your security deposit. No cleaning effort on your part at move-out will keep the Office from charging you for prepping the apt for the next naive like you. (Btw, did you know it's illegal') Don't waste your money on a professional cleaner, stupid -- the Manager knows better how filthy a tenat he harbored all those years. All my former neighbors ended up losing their security deposits. It's $500 to $700 , depending when they moved in. All of them were charged additional fees much higher than the deposit itself. This was despite the fact that they had left their units as clean, if not cleaner than, when they moved in. (It's not that difficult, considering how old and neglected the Complex is.) Speaking as an eyewitness.

The Office employees' self-confidence may be limitless, but so is their ignorance of and disdain for basic CA laws regulating the tenant-landlord relationship. Huge egos and the matching tiny minds behind the Office desks rule at the Fountains. Egotistic pettiness permeates the Office atmosphere. As another tenant put it, "they are having a never-ending high school dropout reunion party in the Office."

During my tenancy alone, the Office building has been lavishly remodeled several times. This included the work-out room, about which Management would brag for years, even though an average tenant does not frequent the mini-gym. We are too busy battling the last month errors in our rent bills. You may ask, "What about the condition of the rental units themselves'" Well, only a small number of them was -- superficially -- renovated in 2008. Their tenants were forced to go through a full-scale move at their own expense. Management promised them a $500 incentive package. Instead, the relocated tenants got only a slightly lower rent for a few months, but paid $200 to $300 "Relocation Fee." Add the typical $650 to $1000 cost of a full-blown move, and you get the picture. Still, the botched and then put on hold renovation project resulted in outrageous advertising to prospect tenants and in higher rents overall. (My my, who would've guessed') Notwithstanding, the cost of renting at the Fountains may appear relatively low. Small wonder. The Fountains puts its own twist on the "you get what you pay for" adage. You get much less here.

One thing you can count on, though, are mistakes in your monthly bills. At first, it may seem fun to you to see the ladies at the Office scramble to explain the inexplicable. But since inflated charges is the only kind of mistakes they make month after month, you'll first get bored, then frustrated, and eventually pissed off. Sorry, no more fun. Welcome to The Fountains, my friend.

The landscaping, mature trees and shrubbery are nice around here. Less so are the copious smelly field mines left among them by your fellow renter canines. Perhaps this is the pets' way of saying to the Management what they think about the mismanaged, old and run down place they are forced to live in' Dogs have their expectations, you know. And what about you' You may give up yours (or visit the lawn near your apartment at night).

You'll be moving into a "renovated" unit, that is, an apartment repainted for the gazillionth time. Watch out! The cabinetry, windows, lighting fixtures, blinds and the carpet will all be painted, i.e., sloppily sprinkled or smeared, with the same paint you will see on your walls. If the contractor forgets to repaint one of these walls (yes, it does happen around here), the Office will patiently explain to you that it was (quote), "on purpose, to provide a focal point." @#$%&! (Excuse my language.)

The complex is a transit point for, among others, divorced middle-aged people, fashionably tattooed-pierced-and-otherwise-creatively-enhanced youth, as well as a colorful mixture of similarly desperate individuals, including yours truly. Come. You may find yourself among your own kind. The Administration tries to fit in. Observe how these people look, speak, and behave. They give a new meaning to the word "professional." They profess to be tolerant and accommodating...

...conequently, security here is highly problematic. Look forward to frequent brawls, obscene squabbles, rowdy night student parties, acts of vandalism, multiple police raids, evictions of next door drunkards and druggies, second-hand smoking (also through the shoddy walls and floors!), burglaries, apartment & garage fires, and last but not least, young people in exotic sex positions among the bushes behind the tennis court. Yes, in eight years, I've seen it all. (Envious, huh')

Owing to some or all of the above, our complex has become a mission field for Mormons and Jehova Witnesses. If they cannot save us from the Office, then at least the spectacle of baptisms of new arrivals in full attire in our tenant-funded swimming pools and spas courtesy Jehova Witnesses will make up for your other sufferings in this Valley of Shadows.

Speaking of which... I suffered a loss of valuables after giving the Office "Permission to Enter while Absent" to make repairs. ("Oh, really'!" said the Manager and went about the more important issues of his busy day.) If the Office hires a security for a couple of weeks -- once or twice a year, after a spell of criminal incidents -- the guy will be giving tickets to skateboarding kids, but will cowardly avoid confronting the adults using shampoo in the pool. He will never confront any non-residents, or their entire families, who sneek into the Complex s facilities. Remember: you'll be paying for the pool, for the security guy, and for the Office people who graciously provided both. The tennis and basketball courts are never properly lit, and if a few bulbs are still on, then it is by mistake. Usually, they are on at the wrong time of the day, anyway, so what the heck do you care' The nets and baskets are damaged, the fence full of holes, the surface dirty and paint faded. Whole soccer teams from outside the complex have been converging on our tennis courts every evening for years. According to a few former neighbors of mine, the courts were renovated in the early 1999 and ruined by the inventive soccer players soon after. In a successful effort to collectively punish... the tenants for the damage -- smacks a ---- tactics -- the Admin kept the courts closed for months. Come and see how the facility look like today, in the fall of 2009, and judge for yourself before you dollars go in the drain.

The companies that manage the property change every couple of years. In the package, you will get one or two rookie managers and a whole set of new (secret) regulations that you'll be expected to follow. No promise made to you by the previous managerila team will be honored by the new one. The new broom will be very eager to sweep clean. Alas, the worst of the rubish will remain: the old office and maintenance staff. On a daily basis, you will have to deal just with them. Seldom will the Property Manager be in. and you will need him or her most, for as I said, the staff is frightingly incompetent.

Yes, in the distant past, there were a few decent people at the Office and in Maintenance you'd wish stayed longer. You wish...

Sad and pessimistic as it sounds, the Fountains is a place neither for decent tenants nor for self-respecting administrators or office workers. I can only speculate why it is so, but this is not my point. I'm just trying to give you a possibly faithful picture of how things ARE. If you have read thus far, don't tell your spouse or rommate you haven't been warned. Actually, you've heard only a part of the story. So please come and complete it by writing your own review. But first do come and live with us here at the Fountains at Moorpark a.k.a. Le Club just for a while. Show your mettle. Join Le Club...

User Responses
From: MsMinez	Date: 10/03/2009
It sounds so sad, what you wrote.. I've lived here going on my 7th year and have had many nice things happen and my place is clean and the area around here clean and no bugs nice neighbors and the office staff with every change has been very polite and supportive?? So sorry you had such a bad experience.
From: love2find	Date: 10/16/2009
My belief is you are a misserable person that focuses on nothing but negative things in yoiur life and feel that expressing non-sense like you did above is fufilling... Little do you know, The Fountains at Moorpark has been fantastic to me! I have loived here for 15 years and see nothing but great things happen this past 5 months. The new management company is working on cleaning up the property. No more sections 8, afforable housing, new exterior lighting, landscape improvments and staff changes that are the best thing that has happened. I beleive this letter is an attack that was stupid!!!! Your a miserable human being that needs to clearly move and stop wasting time.....
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/05/2009
Its funny how you have time to pick out all the negatives. Remember you are living in an apartment not at the Ritz Carlton. If you dont like the living environment get out. Stop compaining and just move. Obviously there is some reason you are still here. SO honestly get a life and grow up.

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