Its tough to write objectively about this place but I will try. Mountainbrook is the type of place which sells people on its complex through beautiful pictures and a beatiful model apartment. Beware, most of it is false advertising. They advertise these apartments in the Poughkeepsie Journal as "LUXURY" and they are FAR from it! I will start from the beginning and include all positives and negatives.

The model apartment we saw was beautiful, however, the apartment we got was nothing like it. We had old appliances, holes in the wall and horrible paint which started peeling within the first month. The insulation was also shoddy. We had so many problems with out insulation that we needed to plastic wrap all of our windows to keep the heat in. The heat by the way, was fine until it dropped below 20, then it was nearly non existent. We also had to hope that the water wouldn't freeze in the pipes and send us no heat whatsoever (see below for more heat issues). The worst thing about this is they HAD to know about the heat problems before us, and yet still gave us that same apartment. Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy...

Moving on. The people who work here are great. If you have problems they usually understand and try to get it fixed ASAP. The maintenance guys are also great people and genuinely care about you, plus most of them live on site, so they deal with the same problems everyone else does. Outside of these people, if you call after hours (which if you think about it, you have more then a 50/50 chance your problem happens after hours) you are connected with a call center somewhere out of town. These people are angry and unhappy. They will talk down to you and will not be considerate of your problems. They also will do very little to help you.

Second, Kamson Corporation, the owners, seem to care very little about the overall conditions of their complexes. They own two that I know of in Poughkeepsie Corlies Manor and Mountainbrook - both of which are dirty and getting more and more lower quality.

The main problem in this complex is heat. According to an employee, heat is forced water through pipes, meaning they use boilers to heat the water and then it is pumped through pipes. In most boiler systems hot water will leave the boiler around 130 degrees and will distribute heat as it travels through the pipes.

However, there are not boilers in each building. For example, building F uses the boiler from building G. The problem with this is that all of the water goes through the entirety of building G before it gets piped underground to the next building. By the time it reaches building F, it is much cooler. So the people in Building G are extremely hot, while those in building F are cold. SO, YOU MUST ASK WHICH BUILDING YOU ARE MOVING INTO AND IF THERE IS A BOILER IN IT. Also, I have heard that many, many other buildings have had serious heat problems. In 2004 or 2005, the Red Cross had to evacuate buildings L and K because they had no heat.

The other problem with this complex is the type of people they let move in. I know of several people who have housed large families in 1-2 bedroom apartments. One tenant in the building next to us had 5 people living in a one bedroom apartment, another had 3 living in a one bedroom apartment. Without sounding too judgmental of people, this is a lower quality living place, not the luxury apartments they advertise.

Finally, I must mention the several shootings that have taken place here. According to a Town of Poughkeepsie Detective, who told me this in confidence so I won't name his name, there have been three shootings in the last few years in the town of Poughkeepsie (not including the city, just the town) and all three took place at Mountainbrook.

The latest shooting took place in June 2007. A man in building F started beating his wife/girlfriend so severely that neighbors heard and called the cops. An off duty NYS Trooper who lived nearby came to her aid and was forced to intervene by shooting the man 2 times to stop him from killing her. Worst about this whole situation was that THE WIFE BEATER WORKED FOR THE COMPLEX - HE WAS A MAINTENANCE MAN!!! This man, who needed to be shot to keep him from killing his gf/wife, was someone who went into people's homes when they called for maintenance help!!!!!!!!!!!

Adding even more to the situation was Mountainbrook's response to it. They had none. There was no letter sent out to calm tenants or let us know that they were taking care of any issues that might have arose because of it. They did this to keep down the publicity - some tenants never even knew about it!!!! In my opinion, everyone should have been informed about the incident and assured that it would all be fine.

I lived here for a little over one year and never will again. I have tried to be objective while writing this and keep out my personal opinions. If i wanted to inlude my opinion, i wrote it as such.

As with any complex, make sure you ask the right questions and put all their answers in writing to make sure they follow through with what you are promised. I would also never agree to move into any apartment without actually viewing that apartment first. Mountainbrook has an amazing model apartment, but their actual apartments look nothing like it. BEWARE!

User Responses
From: j_ardinger	Date: 01/15/2008
we resolved the heat issue by removing the face plate to the thermostat and rigging a plastic tie between the the clear mercury drop thing andf the metal piece to the left of it, basicly tricking it to think it should always stay on. after a yr here and never having maintenance do anything but shine us on about fixing it i was not having another winter of freezing my ass off. it's not always the sharing boiler thing it is often the fact the thermostats are broken or rigged to almost never turn on , so rig itt yourself and presto i have heat. i knew of the shooting but didn't know it was the maintenance guy, i can guess which one it had been based on few things. when i first moved in 3 of the other guys told me never let a certain one in my apt alone and i never saw him after the shooting so i think it was him. i complained that the bathroom needed repairs and paint redoing when i moved in and they took care of it all. they currently are remodeling all apt as they empty. my friends took a 2 bedroom and it has all new everything looks better than the demo apt.
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/16/2008
I too lived at Mountain Brook for many years while attending school and know all too well of the issues with heat and electricity. As for the maintenance man who was shot, the undercover policeman who actually shot him was having an affair with the maintenance mans wife according to police reports......
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/06/2008
I have lived in Building L since 2003. WE WERE NEVER EVACUATED. I have no idea who told you that, but it was blatantly false.

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