I enjoyed living at Highlands for eight months. Yes, the place has some problems with noise (occasional pounding music, kids in the hall, noise from balconies, etc.), people leaving trash all over, and other issues, but compared to other places I lived, things seemed better here overall until the last few weeks. Like another reviewer said, someone started urinating in the elevator (I heard rumors it was a kid and that the family is "on their way out"). Also, someone was siphoning gas out of cars in the garage. Neither of those situations affected me because I usually take the stairs and I don't have a car.

What has affected me the last few weeks is the secondhand smoke in my apartment from my new neighbors in the apartment below me. Their smoke pours into my apartment enough so that I'm having breathing problems and get frequent headaches despite the air purifiers I bought and am running (all at my expense, of course).

I've lived in other apartments with smokers and didn't have a major problem with secondhand smoke--and even the previous downstairs tenants were smokers, but the problem only affected my bathroom then. Now, I actually have to leave the apartment at times and my balcony is rarely usable. I really can't afford to move, but I can't afford to stay, either. The acting manager says she can't do anything about it. I guess now it's a race to see if I can find another place to live before an asthma attack brought on by smoke sends me to a hospital or morgue.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/21/2008
Wow talk about overreacting. I have lived at the highlands for about 2 and a half years now. Things were getting bad but now with new management things are getting much better. I think I know about this tennant and they want all the benefits of living in a house while living in an apartment building. If this person wanted to have a smoke free building she could have just as easily found a completely smoke free building since she knew she had the problem. But blaming the staff for not taking action against a tennent who is smoking in their apartment or on their deck is just plain stupid.
From: Anonymous	Date: 02/15/2009
Overreacting? Is it overreacting for complaining about having to sleep in a chair several nights a week because, even with allergy pills and an inhaler that I'd never taken/used before, being able to breathe lying down was impossible? Is it overreacting for frequently having to leave my apartment entirely, a few times in the middle of the night? Is it overreacting to be upset about spending over $500 trying to solve the issue myself (all while losing income from feeling miserable from lack of sleep and hoarse from coughing)? Also, I never asked the management to take action against the smoking tenants, just let me move to another empty apartment within the building or seal openings in my place to make it livable--management refused to even consider either option. I'd never had a reaction to secondhand smoke even close to that severe in the other seven apartments I lived in the last 25 years, even with other tenants smoking. Finding an AFFORDABLE smoke-free building is difficult (I'm currently paying $300 more a month, although I also gained much quieter, cleaner, and better maintained surroundings as well).

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