First, the pros:

*The apartments are gorgeous and very well-designed. Everything works, is in good condition, very clean. Closets are huge, bathrooms could double as offices, and storage space is plentiful. High ceilings and spacious rooms make them very inviting.
*Nice pool, great playground, fairly good exercise room.

The Cons:

*The apartments are over-priced, you pay for every utility, and during the two years I was there, my "cost of living" increase was almost 15%.
*Office people are constantly coming into the apartment on one pretex or another, at least once, but often twice a month.
*There is an endless stream of memos about this and that, including things like "July Trivia," and no one in their right mind would read. All memos get stuck in the crack of the door, which isn't the most secure place, and memos you actually want or need often get blown away.
*The office staff will take any excuse to leave during the day, putting up one of those clocks to show when they'll be back. It once took me a week of going back every day to actually find someone in.
*Maintenance requests are ignored. I don't know how many times I had to go back twice or three times to repeat the request.
*There is a real gulag feeling that coming from the staff. Children aren't allowed to draw on the sidewalks with chalk, cars are constantly being threatened with towing, bikes aren't allowed on patios.
*Snow clearance is awful. One lane is usually swept on the streets, leaving the snow piled up behind parked cars and making it impossible to back out. The sidewalks are never cleared. Nothing is salted. The staff usually waits a day or two before clearing that one lane in the street to see if the snow will melt on its own.
*The woods behind the complex are filthy. I mean FILTHY. You can't walk two feet without finding plastic soda bottles or McDonald's bags. There are several small "forts" kids have built with signs of fires, smoking, and a lot of rusted railroad spikes, which concern me. Apparently there was a protest when the land was being developed, and some hippies camped out in what is now Brown's Woods for a while. When they left, they were angry enough to leave all their stuff, which is now rotting--tents, clothing, make-up.
*The mail service is erratic, coming at a different time every day, sometimes not coming at all.
*When you move out, you will be charged if you don't clean every possible surface and corner of the apartment, including the undersides of cabinets and the outside edges of your porch railings.
*One of the utility bills is billed three months behind, so when I moved out, I had to pay three times what I was expecting.
*I had to pay a pet fee for a rabbit that lived in a cage.
*I just got my last energy bill from when I was living in CHA, and they failed to turn off my power when I left, so I was billed for the entire month.
*This is my number one complaint: I moved in in August and immediately developed headaches. My January they had become constant and severe. I was in constant pain for seven straight weeks and underwent and MRI to check for brain tumors, was pumped full of pain-killers that didn't help, and I don't know how to much I spent trying to find a cure. Finally I told the office staff that I wanted the apartment checked for mold, which I'm allergic to. The woman on duty said, "Oh, it's probably just your washer pipe. I'll tell them to plug it up." Apparently there is a pipeline directly to the sewer in each kitchen pantry, where the washer is supposed to be connected. Since I didn't have a washer, mine was pumping sewer gas directly into my kitchen. I spent two weeks waiting for the maintenance people to finally plug the pipe up (which involved nothing more than jamming a rubber stopper in with a fist), after which the headaches stopped completely. My anger stems from the office woman's reaction to my request, which said to me that I certainly wasn't the first person to have this problem. If that's the case, why don't they just plug up all of the pipes and let people with washers remove them' I went through seven months of pain and several thousand dollars in medical bills because of their laziness.

On the subject of children: Yes, the kids are noisy. They're kids. If you don't like kids, and if you don't find their noise sort of charming, don't move in here. I never heard them after about nine at night, though.

Oh, and about the train: Yes, it comes through twice a day. If the staff tells you otherwise, they're lying. I personally love the sound of trains, but if you're a light sleeper and can't deal with trains (which run about a hundred feet from the buildings on the north and east sides) don't move in here.

User Responses
From: seensay	Date: 12/05/2006
I'm an ex-resident who didn't love my experience there, but some of your complaints are silly 1) The USPS delivers your mail - the CHA staff had nothing to do with it. 2) If your electricity wasn't turned off it was because you didn't contact the electric company and tell them to disconnect the service. It's your $ and your responsibility so blame yourself for that one!

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