This is my fifth and final year at U of I and I have lived in a wide variety of living arrangments (dorms, fraternity house, 3 different apartments) and Gabe's Place is by far the worst landlord I have ever had.

I lived at the 810 W. Iowa location and my year started off similarly to another responders where I was shown a Gabe's apartment with nice furnishings which was completley clean. When I moved into my own apartment, which I believed was the one I was shown, to find it missing over half of these furnishings, incredibly dirty, smelly, and with several applianes not working. I realized Gabe's leasing agent had pulled a bait and switch on me and I was stuck with this hellhole of an apartment for the year.

The couch they provided us with had an unusual smell and we believed it to be infested in some way. It was so bad to the point, I would not want to sit on it with my bare skin exposed to the couch for I would itch constantly afterwards. It took them about 3 weeks to replace this couch. Our apartment was never cleaned, and Gabe's management will surely fine me severely if I leave the apartment in the filthy condition I moved in. The walls are paper thin and I can practically hear converstations going on in other apartments of the building.

Gabe purchased the house adjacent to my apartment complex which used to the the old baseball house which was surely trashed. I watched as over the course of several weeks, Gabe's employees gutted the house and removed the couches and mattresses to the backyard. They were left outside for a bout a week in which it rained several times, and I witnessed his crews bringing some of these same couches and mattresses back into the house. THis is likely how my couch got infested.

Gabe also provides his tenants with a sappy letter telling how much he cared for their complete satisfaction and if they had a maintenance issue that was not fixed after September 1, within 48 hours they would receive a $50 gift certificate. I have asked numerous times for this gift certificate as I still have some maintenance requests that were never fulfilled. The office staff has declined to provide me with one stating that this is only for emergencies even though the letter clearly states otherwise. I have asked numerous times to speak to Gabe, and the office staff has not let me. One time I saw him in the office when I went to drop off a check, and I asked one of his office staff members to let me speak to him and she told me he was not there less than one minute later. This was clearly a bald faced lie.

I could continue this rant and go into other details about how terrible Gabe's Place is. I feel U of I students deserve better than to get ripped off and lied to by their landlord. I have explored numerous housing options, and renting from Gabe was the worst decision I ever made in regards to housing at this university. I just hope others will heed this warning and not make the same mistake.

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