Wow, where do I start' We lived in these buildings from around 1987 all the way until around 2002-2003 (something like 16 years in total) before we were finally lucky-enough to have a change in situation which enabled us to move out. Back then it was actually called "Kings Highway Towers," not "The Arbors" as it is called now. But regardless of name, I read all of these reviews and can't help but laugh, because the majority of it is completely true.

We lived in the (infamous') "D" building. As others here have said, the elevators hardly ever worked and when they did you would frequently find urine, beer cans/bottles, and/or food smeared all over them. The fire towers were often littered with bottles, drugs, trash, and even used condoms (as was the parking lot).

Safety was a joke... lots of fights, vandalism, drug usage (particularly in the fire towers and in back of the buildings), and lots of creepy people hanging around. Often time the lobby was trashed by "hoodlums of the week" and the glass lobby doors were often completely shattered with glass left all over the place. Half the time the lock to the lobby entry door did not work properly, allowing anyone to gain access into the lobby without a key. I'm not sure if they fixed/upgraded the lobby door entry system after the renovation.

Going back inside the apartment there was a huge roach problem, having both small German roaches and large (Volvo-sized, by roach-standards) Oriental roaches. We kept our own apartment extremely clean, but the roaches just crawled in from surrounding apartments no matter what steps we took to try and keep them out. In my one friend's apartment across the hallway I saw literally hundreds of roaches scurrying all over his walls when he flipped the wall switch to turn on a lamp in his living room (and to think that those were just the roaches that I DID manage to see at the time... who knows how many were still hiding behind the walls). Regular visits by exterminators did nothing to curb the roach problem. My other friends apartment, two floors above, also had a problem with mice at one point. We believe that the mice traveled from apartment to apartment via the floor radiator ducts. But the "creme de la creme of pestitude" as far as our own personal experience was concerned was one time when a bat (yes, I said a bat... as in a furry, winged-mouse with claws) found it's way into our apartment and decided to "chill" upside-down on our curtain rod for half the evening. (Apparently there are bats living in the forest behind the buildings.) We called management and they simply said "Well what do you expect us to do about it'" so we were forced to call (and also pay for) a professional exterminator to come over in order to trap and remove the bat. By the way, did you know that bat-droppings are extremely poisonous'!'

But, getting back on topic, the washers/dryers hardly ever worked right and yes, people did frequently mistake the washing machines for porta-potties, as disgusting as that is. Kids would run around the hallways firing off the fire extinguishers at the doors of other tenants. They would also ride their bikes down the hallways leaving skid-marks on the carpets. The air-conditioners in the apartments looked like something out of medieval times and frequently gave off a funny, mold-like smell while running. Water spots from leaks in the apartments above our 6th floor apartment frequently appeared on the walls, leaving yellow stains and causing cracks to appear.

There used to be a huge pool located centrally between the four buildings which was not kept up and which often had some pretty disgusting stuff floating around in there.

Neighbors were generally what you would expect from a place which required frequent visits from both the Moorestown AND Maple Shade Police Departments. Lot's of domestic-violence occurred while we were there... as if signs were posted saying "beat your wife, please!" Right as we were nearing the end of our 16 year stay they started allowing a lot more low-income tenants to rent apartments under the "HUD" program. These people would come in and get the same grade of apartment that we had, while paying hundreds less a month in rent than we ourselves were being forced to pay.

While we were finally preparing to leave the apartments they launched a multi-million dollar renovation project to try and upgrade the buildings/apartments. The renovations occurred with NO RESPECT to the buildings occupants. Imagine construction workers hanging on a scaffold outside your window using "SawzAll's" to cut slots into the dry wall surrounding our windows during the morning hours, roughly three feet from your head as you're trying to sleep (of course, not a problem if you're accustomed to a decibel level roughly equivalent to say a small jackhammer). Not to mention all of the dust and debris from the dry-wall being cut forming a cloud of chalky dust in your bedroom and other rooms, as well as piles of dust left all along the carpets (they made no effort to clean this up, the tenants were forced to clean up the mess themselves). One time I threatened to call the cops on the construction workers but they couldn't understand me, so my threats were futile. Of course, the renovations were completely pointless in the end, as they continued renting out to the same types which had been defacing the property all along. Hey, I've got an idea... lets raise the rent again after having put a few million $$$ into renovations so that these hoodlums have some new, expensive stuff to trash! I think that at the time that we finally moved out we had been paying around $880/month for a two-bedroom, one bathroom. But, we had received a notice from the landlord stating that the rent was about to increase by several hundred dollars due to the renovation project. Also, they stated that they were to begin making tenants, themselves responsible for the cost of electricity in their apartment. Previously, ALL utilities (including electricity) had been included in the rent amount.

Okay, so as I'm sure you have probably realized by now, I would not call our long stay there a happy one. I'm not sure what direction things took after the apartments became The Arbors, but from reading the other reviews here is seems that nothing has changed there over the years. Different property name, different management, different ownership, same general type of people renting out the apartments.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 08/20/2007
most of what u said may have been true but you sound very ignorant and racist, as the low-income tenants defintely were not the only reason the property is trash...
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/01/2007
Actually, many of my friends are not Caucasians, but ------- Americans and Muslims, so unfortunately I cannot agree with your comment that I am a racist person. However, I will agree with you that not all low-income people are bad. Trust me, I knew some really nice lower-income people while I was there who I was proud to call my friends and neighbors. Problem is that the nice ones never stayed for very long, for they ended up leaving for the same reasons as we. And even they too agreed as they were leaving that the majority of the problems seem to be caused most frequently by tenants known to be HUD's and Section 8's. This agreement coming from neighbors who were low-income individuals, themselves. As for ignorance, I just call things as I see them and after having experienced these and other things on a regular basis for 16 years I think I have a pretty good idea what I was talking about when I wrote this review. I now live in an area where the average monthly rent paid by the tenants is around $1,300... and we honestly have none of the problems that we encountered back when we were living at the Arbors. So again, I will agree with you that the problems at the Arbors are not due solely to low-income individuals, for not all low-income individuals are bad people. There are many who are actually nice, hard-working, and respectful people. But you will have to admit that there is a certain kind of people living at the Arbors, whatever kind that is, which are the reason why the property is and will remain the way that it is.

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