I lived 1 year in this place and here is my review about BARRACKS WEST (previously called OLD SALEM)

PROS:
- the price/square feet is pretty low compare to the average in C'ville (I was paying $730 for 1,000 square feet)
- places to park my car
- small shop (barracks market) at walking distance.
- swimming pool
- patio

CONS:
- the place is NOT SAFE: in one year I got 2 flaten tires, my car was broken into and we saw the police 3-4 times. All that in 12 months. Probably one of the less safe place of Cville!
- place is very old (built in 1972) and the apartments are falling apart since they have never been renovated.
- There was no hookup for a W/D in my townhouse. If we wanted them, we needed to setup them in the dining room with some tubes going to the kitchen... a joke.
- All the AC are outside, so during the summer you cannot enjoy your patio because of the noise of the AC of your neighbors
- the maintenance service quality is very bad: for 2 months I had barely enough hot water to take my shower. Despite an oral and a written complaint, it took them 2 months to fix it. In the lease it was written that hot water should be fixed in 24 hours, I did not get any compensations.
- the staff don't care as long you don't writte a letter.
- the maintenance makes very bad jobs: the 1st time they fix the heater, the fan was so loud that we couldn't talk in the living room. We wrote again a letter...
- the heating system is a nightmare during the winter and needs seriously to be complemented with electric heating. In my townhouse, even with the heating working, it was ALWAYS freezing downstair. Thus we barely used the LR during the winter.
- poor insulation at the windows. Waste of energy.
- the laundry rooms are VERY dirty. And it's expensive... $1.50 for washing and $1.25 for drying. For 2, in one year, we spent more than $350 in this wicked laundries. Not worth at all.
- the fitness room is a joke. You can never access it.
- The wood floor is full of paint spots. It seems that painting the walls with guns is not that great...
- Poor electricity, many blackouts.
- Noisy gas generators were setup this year. I got one just near my patio and it's running about once a week. When it's running, I have the feeling that a truck is parked just on the other side of the wall. I still don't know what this generators are for... The best is when they failed: a continuous bell rings, and if unfortunately you discover that beginning of the evening when coming back from work, you will have to sleep with it.
- a flat rate has been implemented this year for the gas water. The flat rate was $116 where I was paying $120 for gas water during the winter, and barely $60 during the other months of the year... This is a scam. Note that NO justification on the amount of the flat rate was given, just to give you an idea with who you are dealing with...
- the swimming pool is filthy
- kids are crazy, yelling non-stop during the weekend. It seems that parents or the woman that should take care of don't care.
- mailbox can be far from the townhouse and is very small. The mailbox is so small that as soon we forgot to pick up our mails for 3 days, our mail was in hold at the main post office! Of course what filled our mailbox so fast was not our mails, but all hte junk that the postman put himself in it...

GO AWAY FROM BARRACKS WEST! GO AWAY FROM HASBROUCK!

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