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The Carlyle House


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cinquex

Resident 2013 - 2014

12/14/2014

The Carlyle House is an absolutely abysmal building. The old structural foundation of the building is atrocious. I have lived in buildings in the same immediate area that were built more than a decade before the Carlyle House that are far superior in construction and material quality. To make matters worse, the Condo Association of the Carlyle House has failed to do any significant improvements or upkeep of the building since it was built. Its idea of an improvement is to patch up parts of the building that have already deteriorated to the point of falling down or flooding. The building's failing elevators have a 15 year life span but are only now being replaced after 40 years. The building is so cheaply constructed that every sound reverberates. You can hear and feel the doors slam not just of the units on your floor but the doors of units on the floor above and below your unit. Slamming of the trash chute door in the center of the building can be heard all the way down the end of the hall because the building is so poorly constructed and insulated. Most of the units have wood flooring, which increases the noise from the units above you exponentially. The general requirement in most apartment buildings that at least 75% of the floor be carpeted does not exist here. The Condo Association just announced a new committee to study the long-term effects of secondhand smoke. The building is so poorly constructed and insulated that if you find yourself living next to a smoker, you will experience almost as much smoke as the smoker. The so-called manager is not only incompetent, I have found her to be completely lacking in integrity and veracity. She has a couple of housing management titles listed after her name that clearly must be honorary or obtained through the mail. The building also has a very distasteful cultural aspect as well. Certain owners have a penchant for making thinly veiled racist and bigoted posts on the building's intra-net, which everyone receives in their email. When the first such post was made after I moved in, I thought it was an aberration since no one responded to the bigoted poster. But the posts didn't stop they occur on a regular basis. The posts have a distinct neo-Confederate, Teabagger, Faux News tone. The targets of the racist bigoted posts are generally low-income Latino or black residents that live near the Carlyle House and of course President Obama and Obamacare. The posts are often made under the guise of concern for the property values of the Carlyle House. This is ironic because the biggest cause of the diminishing property values of the Carlyle House appears to be the deteriorating condition of the Carlyle House, not the persons of color who live nearby or the affordable housing planned for the area. The manager, as well as several owners, also loves to post police bulletins of old crimes committed by persons of color suspects in the community. These postings serve no purpose other than to engage in racial profiling and racial stereotyping. Ironically, one posting described a criminal suspect that fitted the general description of the only black male who works the Carlyle House concierge desk. Not surprising, a few months earlier the manager posted a notice of the death of a longtime unit owner. The notice proudly stated that the deceased owner was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the Colonial Dames of Maryland and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Now, this is a notice posted in a building with a significant population of persons of color, who generally speaking I would guess are not fans of the Confederate States of America or what they stood/stand for. The only good things about the Carlyle House are its location in relation to public transit, the Ballston and Pentagon City Malls and the Virginia Hospital Center, which are all incidental. There are some decent Carlyle House staff members that work the concierge desk but their good work is overshadowed by the duplicity and incompetence of the building manager. Therefore, I HATE, HATE, HATE the Carlyle House and can't wait to leave in the coming months.

    Review 9 out of 12

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    The Carlyle House

    March 2024

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