Mountain Ridge wasn't such a bad place, and I have to agree with another review that said that it's relatively affordable (for Maryland) and relatively safe (for Glen Burnie). We lived at Mountain Ridge in a top floor one bedroom unit facing a parking lot. I'd recommend a unit facing the other way because as the months wore on our neighbors began honking their horns to pick somebody up, and the hour of day or night didn't matter. It says a lot about the type of people who rent here. There isn't a lot of self respect or respect for each other.

The typical renter at Mountain Ridge terminates their lease agreement by not paying their rent, waiting until they get an eviction notice and then skipping town in the dark of night before the police arrive with the repo men and the surly fella from maintenance the next day. This happened to four of the twelve neighbors who shared our causeway in the time we stayed there.

When we first inspected the apartment we noticed a few things wrong with it, including that the bedroom had no door. The lease specialist assured us it would be there by the time we moved in. Sure enough, it was, but it was missing a door knob. When the surly fella from maintenance came to fix it, he told us we had only asked for a door, that's why they hadn't given us a door and a door knob. The other major problem when we moved in was a leaky toilet that took them six weeks to fix.

When we moved in we spent eight hours cleaning the place and making it livable, and left it in a lot better shape than when we moved in, but they still charged us for water damage that was there when we moved in, noted on our inspection form, and that we had called maintenance about several times only to see the problem ignored.

It seems like there should be enough parking spaces when you come to look at the place, but at night there isn't. Some of the people who live alone here have three vehicles, it would be fine otherwise.

There's a school bus turnaround near the entrance of the community. This is a middle of the night meeting place for people who sit in their SUVs with the engines running, conducting who knows what sort of business. There used to be cops who lived in this neighborhood, this all started when they moved elsewhere.

A lot of the neighbors are sketchy looking, they don't do criminal background checks here. It's a lot safer than Baltimore, but a lot of shady characters come through here.

The apartment itself isn't too bad aside from the minor repairs that were neglected by the surly fella from maintenance. The appliances are old but functional, and I particularly liked cooking with the early eighties era stove (no sarcasm intended, I actually liked how simple it was). The dishwasher made the dishes stink faintly of sewage, I never figured out why, I just stopped using it. The hot water heater is tiny. I mean really tiny. You've got about five minutes of hot water in a shower, two if you run it on full blast, and you can only fill the tub up with warm water about three inches deep. The air conditioner works but sounds like a freight train is plowing through the walls when it kicks on. It wasn't just our unit either, you can hear your neighbors units from outside. On a hot day the place sounds like a coal fired power plant. The balconies are nice, nobody else used them except to smoke. We put Christmas lights on ours in December, nobody else did. The built in "entertainment center" that they advertise is a joke, it's three bookshelves about 18" wide and an outlet. The cable jack is in the worst place, by the front door. The front door is drafty, we fixed ours with weatherstripping to keep the stink of the hallway (cigarette smoke, laundry, years of funk and occasionally pot) out of the apartment. No washers or dryers in the unit, just some junky units in the basement that run $1.75 a load. After I saw somebody stick their dirty clothes in the dryer (to make them smell fresh, maybe') I started taking my clothes to the nearby laundromat. There are dozens to choose from, you're bound to find one you would like.

Location. This apartment complex is the place to be in Glen Burnie, if you ask me. It's right around the corner from the nicest Target you've ever been to, a 24-hour Rite-Aid, a surprisingly useful Big Lots, a really nice looking Aquatic Center that I never used and a reportedly nice hospital that I also never used. An entrance on Hospital drive sucks, though. You don't want to try to turn left at rush hour. Instead, turn right, go to Elvaton road, turn right, U-turn, and then turn left on Hospital drive at the light. Trust me, it's just quicker, and with a view obscured by some ill-placed shrubbery, safer. Glen Burnie offers some surprising gems if you're willing to look. Every Saturday evening when the weather is nice there is a classic car show outside of the Centre at Glen Burnie, at the intersection of 2 and 3. The BWI and B&A trails are close by, as is an observing area to watch the planes come into the airport. It's pretty close to Columbia and Annapolis and Baltimore and some nice state parks by the bay.

It seems like it should be the perfect place to live, but it's not. There are a lot of homeless people in Glen Burnie, and just before we moved out a 15 year old beat one to death with a bat just around the corner from Mountain Ridge. There's something wrong with the kids these days, and there's something wrong with this place. But it's Maryland, after all, and Maryland ain't so great, so if you're stuck here, give Mountain Ridge a try. I can honestly say that it's the best place to live in Glen Burnie.

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