Hello readers,
I am a 23 year old single male who has lived in 11 states and has rented from many leasing offices. I lived in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina and dealt with some pretty sketchy landlords. However, nothing I have experieced has been half as bad as my experience with the Yards at Union Station. I barely know where to start, but here goes:
1. The place is absolutely filthy (in terms of the halls and the lobby) and if you dare leave your door unlocked you will be robbed. I lived in a poor section in NYC for a while but felt that my chances of being broken into at the Yards was much more likely. For one, residents open the door for people off the streets all of the time. The Yards is home to many low-income people (nothing against poor people) but they will test the doors to see who's locking them, trust me, I witnessed it many times. I would also find spit on my door from time to time (I guess they were mad that I kept it locked). My car window was smashed into while I lived at the Yards, in the parking garage that I paid a monthly fee for no less. When I went into the leasing office to report it to the Property Manager,-------------, she seemed sympathetic but did nothing. Which leaves me to my second complaint.....
2. Everyone in the leasing office will say anything to temporarily satisfy you but will do nothing as far as follow-through or getting an issue resolved. They seem like a nice bunch of employees but are either naturally very lazy or are told my their boss to keep their mouths shut.------------- is a crook! As mentioned earlier, she is the property manager and definitely sets the bar as far as poor service goes. When I came into her office in May, I discussed the possibility of breaking my year's lease and moving to somewhere else, where rent is cheaper and the area is cleaner. She promised me that I would only be responsible for the pro-rated month of June while my two-bedroom apartment was vacated. She told me that because I informed her in advance that I would probably be charged only $44 as these apartments get rented out very quickly. FYI, the only reason why the Yards makes money is because they take advantage of naive college graduates like me or high schoolers who moved to Portland on a whim and see that the location is good and the rent is reasonable. If you do some research, you will find that there are much cheaper and essentially better locations than the Yards, but reading this review means that you are smarter than I was.
So this is a bit of a rant, but let me finish by saying that they ended up charging me an additional $456 on top of keeping my $340 deposit. I called for two weeks straight and was always told that the bookeeper, ----, was out of town, or out to lunch or just stepped out but she would be sure to return my call later that day. Haha not in my experience. Because I threatened to inform the property owner about -----'s lack of response, she in turn threatened to raise the amount I owed to $1225, a full month's rent. She finally had ---- call me back and although I told her how ironic is was that I owed them money but yet was the one trying to track them down, all she said was thank you for renting from us and that she'd be sure to voice my complaint along to her boss,-------------. I am totally not one to complain and I never write reviews of places so obviously this place is horrible.
DO NOT RENT FROM THE YARDS IF YOU VALUE YOUR MONEY OR YOUR STATE OF MIND!! I am soo glad I moved from there, even if cost me an arm and a leg to get out, and can only advise you to not move there in the first place.
....and if all of this is not enough, the train goes by from time to time and you will be stuck in traffic for 30-45 minutes on many occasions. Not necessarily the Yards fault, but it still is frustrating for those of us who work and need to be on time or who don't want to sit in their car for half an hour after a long day's worth of work.
Thanks for reading!

User Responses
From: theirshame	Date: 07/30/2008
I had a similar monetary ordeal with the Yards. Though, nothing was resolved, I did send a complaint letter to GSL's main office.
From: Anonymous	Date: 08/30/2008
Would you suggest any other apartments instead? I just moved to town and was excited to move into the yards because of the price of rent and the location. Now I'm a little bummed and still need to find and affordable studio in the downtown area.
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/02/2008
I too live at the yards, and will be moving soon, it has been 4 long years of harrassment. If you have problem and you call or take it to the ofice you will be heard and then they quickly sweep it under the rug. I agree with bdc1019, the yards is the worst place by far that I have ever lived in. I too have lived in 13 states and 26 cities within those states. And from the ghetto to upper class areas, and the yards has the worst way of dealing with tenants that I have ever seen, it seems to me like they threaten you with an eviction if you don't live your life there way. The shame of it all is it could be a nice place to live if they had better office management and and people friendly empployees. I could go on forever about the yards, but everything I would have to say would be negative. The only good part is I'm moving.
From: omihell	Date: 09/03/2008
Everything this writer states is true but doesn't begin to address the problems. Management is useless and they lie blatantly to your face; the common areas in the buildings are filthy; some of the tenants are truly, truly scary; the noise is fierce; And they are asking for more money then it is worth. If you are a potential renter-run, don't walk, away!!!!1 Better yet, do not come here at all.

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