I lived in these apartments from Aug. 2003 to Aug. 2009 because I couldn't beat the price. It's a convenient location: a straight shot to downtown on South 1st, close to the shops at Southpark Meadows, an HEB right next door. I knew it wasn't a great part of town when I moved in, but the neighborhood has certainly gotten worse in the last few years. There was a stabbing across the street in July 2009, and Summer Valley still failed to fix the gates (which haven't worked for at least the last three years) or fix the lighting in the parking lots (the back parking lot is especially dark) or hire a decent security guard service (they have an off-duty cop that walks through once a night, but even he can't be everywhere). Then a week later, there was a homicide shooting in the back parking lot - it was a drug deal gone bad. I learned more about it from the 5pm news that night instead of from Summer Valley. None of the guys involved in the shooting lived in the complex. I was unlucky enough to park in the back that night, and the hood of my car has a stray bullet hole. No joke. No apology from Summer Valley either.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2009/08/03/police_charge_man_in_july_stab.html

http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/txcn/austin/stories/072909kvue-south-austin-fatal-shooting-ls.899527db.html

http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/local/072909_one_dead_one_injured_in_south_austin_shooting

For those of you still reading at this point, I think it's safe to say Summer Valley's management team isn't so great. Besides ignoring basic safety issues like those above, the water system was being repaired so often they just stopped putting shut off notices on the doors completely. They also never knew how long repairs would take, sometimes only an hour, sometimes all afternoon (like 6 hours). They also put notices the day before some "inspection" was to take place - but they never said what the inspections were for. Getting maintenance repairs were also a pain. I put in a request for a leak in my ceiling (I lived on the 3rd floor), and it took 4 or 5 requests, spanning over a year, for them to fix it. They finally sent someone in to spackle over it, but no one had fixed the leak. So naturally once it started raining again, the water and mushy sheetrock fell through my ceiling again.

Appliances and a/c are 20 years old, and the water pipes rattle. They've painted the exteriors and put in gravel that just gets kicked around = waste of money. The front small parking lot floods if there's a lot of rainfall. It's flooded twice (totaling my boyfriend's car), and Summer Valley has yet to fix it (like clearing out the drainage pipe that is full of rock and gravel from their landscaping). But they did get rid of a lot of the speed bumps in the parking lot, and lowered the rest. And they did stop requiring a parking sticker. But don't park up on the hill (towards the townhomes) - your car is likely to be broken into.

So I guess the gist of my story, what you should take away from this, is don't live here.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 11/08/2009
Its funny you have so much to complain about andyou have stayed there for so long shootings can happen anywhere anyone knows that you can't helpthe ingnorance of people I have been here for 3 yrs and I have yet to have a problem but I guess if I do I can get on here like everyone else that is disgruttled:)

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