First, the good. The grounds, at least on the south side, are well maintained and very pretty, as is the pool.
The room layout inside my apartment is really quite nice except for the kitchen.
MOST of my neighbors are friendly people. I got unsolicited help moving in, for example, and one of my neighbors gives everyone in the building cookies several times a year.
I've been told by maintenence staff that my apartment uses as much power as the rest of the building I live in (12 computers, two additional ACs, second freezer and some other no-doubt abusive stuff), so I'm really thankful for free utilities.
My apartment is very warm. I keep windows open throughout the winter. During the summer I run a number of AC units. No one seems to care and to be honest it's very comfortable.
The Mansards is centrally located between south lake county, Chicago and Porter county. It's nice to be a half-hour from anyplace I want to go.

The bad: My SO doesn't feel safe. We had a shooting last year beneath my balcony. No one even called the cops except us.
Wiring: Phones in the mansards, nearly as I can tell, are either wired into a fiber MUX or are so delapidated that high-speed modem connections are not possible. I need two phone connections to get speeds approximately equal to 28.8k. My neighbors have the same problem. No apartment complex in Lake County, IN, offers broadband service. Connection quality is poor for voice as well. I urge anyone moving into the Mansards to stop by the Verizon Store in Mansards Plaza to make an investment in a Cell phone.
My upstairs neighbors moved in 18 months ago, turned on their stereo, and have literally NEVER shut it off (seriously, never, ever). They listen to thumpy-thumpy bass music. Griffith PD has actually stopped responding to noise complaints from my address. My upstairs neighbors have never been issued even a ticket for noise violations, because of the way the noise ordinances in Griffith are written.
Electrical wiring is a little bit bothersome. My apartment had a small fire caused by a roof leak into some wiring in an outer wall. It took the building almost two weeks to fix the problem because the fire started on Xmas eve. Ever since then, I've worried - what I saw from what the electrician was doing was not in any way comforting.
The Mansards does not do recycling. I keep paper and plastic and recycle them myself.
My kitchen is tiny, my fridge is damn near useless for keeping more than a couple days of food. I bought an extra freezer just because I got sick of only having enough stuff for a couple of meals on-hand. I do a lot of food prep at the kitchen table because there just isn't any counter space.

Water quality isn't that good. I buy a $20 water filter pretty much every month. Water pressure was excellent. I don't know why but I checked for a regulator in the shower shortly after I moved in. One was installed, but I removed it, and my water pressure is great in the shower. The bathtub is on the small side.

The neighbor situation is luck of the draw, and that's my biggest single beef with the Mansards. I'd pay them to move at this point. The rest of the problems I have are just the result of being in old buildings entirely too close to Gary, and it's all stuff I'm willing to put up with given the location of the apartments to everywhere I need to go.
Of course, I can understand perfectly if someone else wasn't willing to do that.

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