I've been at Hidden Palms for about three months and this is my first apartment. Having never gone through leasing an apartment before, I wasn't sure if all places required what Hidden Palms does of it's tenents. On top of the deposit, we had to pay double the first month's rent, plus another month's rent only two weeks later. We had to get renter's insurance as well. They like to tack on an extra $10 to the rent for anything; view of the pool, first floor apartment, view of the 'lake' which is a retention pond with a fountain.
The parking is deplorable. If you get home after 5pm, you pretty much have to either create your own space and hope you won't get a ticket for it or park six buildings away and hike it back to your place. The management will do nothing about this. The dumpsters are frequently overflowing for days before it's picked up, and because of the aforementioned parking issues, many times they won't get emptied at all because one car is too close to the dumpster when the city comes to pick it up. There are clear signs stating that no furniture is to be dumped at the dumpsters, but these are obviously just for show, as there are always couches and matresses loitering around.
When I first moved in, all of the maintenence requests I had were fixed very quickly. It took us about one week to fully move in, and during that time, I noticed some interesting bugs running through the place, so I asked to have the apartment sprayed. Apparently they came while we were not there, and they left us a card, claiming to have treated the apartment, but we saw absolutely no change in the amount of bugs or the frequency at which they appeared. I've seen everything from your common Florida flying cockroach to centipedes to spiders. I've been continually spraying the place myself with some over the counter Raid and it's been slowly ending the problem, but the little black ants in the kitchen do not seem to be affected by anything.
I've had no problems with crime, but other tenets have claimed to have their cars broken into or stolen at gunpoint! Another claimed there was a big cocaine bust and even a murder in an adjacent building! The parking lot is not very well-lit, and I won't go out at night alone. The curtains and blinds are never opened, due to reports of a few peeping toms.
The location I find is difficult to navigate into. There are only two entrances to the complex, both of which are on back roads ceaselessly choked with traffic from usf students. No matter what direction I take home, I feel as though I'm driving out of my way to get there. The most recent problems I've had with maintenance involve an ant-infested dishwasher that smokes during the drying cycle, a non-working garbage disposal, for the second time since moving in, and a flood in the laundry room which has escalated from a small puddle on the floor to the dampening of the carpet inside the apartment in only three days. Tha saddest part of this one is that this flood is not even the result of our water heater, but the one in the apartment above us! It's taken three calls to the office to get anyone in to look at anything. They've already promised us a new dishwasher, but everytime we call back to check the progress of that, we're asked who we spoke with last time and what exactly is wrong with the one we have. All maintenance requests are ended with, "ok." No expected time for completion or hint at what will be done about it.
Most of my experience so far has been acceptable, however, I'm beginning to worry about the continual bug problem and need for maintenance to fix things that were already 'fixed'. I can say I'm more than a little annoyed with the parking situation, especially because we are penalized for parking outside a designated space. I have every intention of staying for my entire 12 month lease, but I will be looking for alternatives once this lease is expired. lGjq8RUBjvsZjkb5ueji

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 06/05/2008
i lived there and the murder is true. it was an intruder who got shot. a bullet went threw my friends window on that same floor. everything you say is true. i ment a woman who went on vacation and came back to her whole apartment flooded because her roof caved in. all her ---- was messed up.

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