In May of 2008, management here changed the way we are billed for water. It used to be a flat $35 per month for an apartment with one person, and was included as part of the per-month cost, specified in the lease. But in May 2008, we got a notice about a change to the policy, which I kept. It states in part:

"We are taking a leadership role in the effort to conserve our most precious natural resource, water, and to control its rapidly rising cost. We have made a commitment to the management of our water/sewer utilities, and will be working with Conservice to assist us in meeting our utility objectives."

One must be pretty naive to take such a statement at face value. I was suspicious that the purpose of this change was to impose what amounts to hidden rent increases, to take place at any time within the lease period, in addition to the already substantial rent increases imposed on us after ownership of the complex changed hands in 2006. This suspicion has been confirmed. For last month, the water bill was over $62 for an apartment with one person, and over $90 for an apartment with two people.

The company called Conservice, whose purpose as stated in the notice quoted above is "...to assist us in meeting our utility objectives" is a billing company. The "leadership role" they're supposedly taking to conservation consists of running the lawn sprinklers when it's raining. In addition to the charges for water, sewer and trash on the utility bill, there is a charge imposed by Conservice itself. This is a so-called "billing charge", in which we pay Conservice for sending the bill to us. The bill itself contains no itemization of the amount of water used or its cost. So there is no accountability to the system, unlike electric and gas utilities which are required by law to provide all specifics of usage.

When I asked the manager why the bill doubled from the previous month, I instead got an explanation of what the bill they received supposedly was, and a vague explanation of how they figure out what to charge people. They thought the increase might be due to the so-called swimming pool. The "pool" is not really a pool at all, but more like a wading pool. They could provide no specifics about the reason for the exorbitant bill though. However, the manager insisted it would come back down to normal in the following months. But if they don't know why it's so large to begin with, I fail to see how they could know that it would come back to normal - unless they know something that they're not letting on.

This also happened last year, but at least it was handled well at that time. We received a small rent reduction for the following month and things returned mostly to normal afterward. When I pointed this out to our current manager, she stated that they were going to determine whether they would do so again, and if so, we would receive a notice to that effect. If you read the review two below this one, you'll see they told that tenant an entirely different story - that there would be a credit applied to the following month's water bill. Neither has happened. By the differing stories told to each tenant, one can reasonably conclude that they're simply telling people whatever it takes to get rid of them as quickly as possible without actually resolving the problem.

This used to be a wonderful place to live before the ownership changed hands in 2006 and Greystar took over. It's sad to see what has happened.

One further thing is worth noting. In November 2008, the managers called up everybody in the complex to ask them to write a positive review on this web site. We were told that the best comments written here would appear in their marketing literature. I consider this to be pretty questionable from the perspective of ethics. As a result of this marketing campaign, you'll see a group of positive reviews here that start in November 2008. It's unclear whether there was any "quid pro quo" arrangement as part of this, as I was noncommittal in my response at that time.

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