The Slums of MV

In case you've ever wondered about some of the places we use to live, here's a review I wrote up in late 2001 about an apartment we lived in from 1999-2001. I updated it today to all a few more pertinent details (which will hopefully keep people away from this place!). I should have reported this place when we lived there. It was horrendous! The manager was mentally incompetent (I'm not sure he should have been allowed to live alone), and unable to take care of the place. The management company didn't care what went on. With the exception of indoor plumbing and living on the 2nd floor (which kept out the mice), we lived in the slums. I'm pretty sure we would have frozen to death if we'd lived in another part of the country. As it was, we roasted all summer, and lived in a fairly mild area! 


"From the outside, Ed_____ Apartments looks decent. The manager, although incredibly incompetent, tries really hard to sweet talk you. The rent is very reasonable for this area, but you get less than what you pay for. Once living there, one will notice that it has a lot of bad points followed by a few good points.

The complex manager is unresponsive unless the issue is absolutely urgent, and the apartments are in really bad shape. They bake in summer time, and freeze in the winter, due to the fact that the windows and doors are ill-fitted and leak, don't close all the way, and dust is the main form of insulation in the attic (average indoor summer temperature: 94 during the day, 85 degrees in the evenings, average winter temperature(prior to turning on the heater) is 45-50 degrees). All updates done in the apartments are shoddy, and use cheap materials. Expect a lot of stuff to fall apart (I had two closet doors and the sliding glass shower door fall on me!). If your maintenance request isn't urgent, and you don't threaten the manager, your problem may never be fixed. It took 3 days for the manager to even look at a sink that was so clogged it took a plumber 2 hours to fix it (called on Saturday, plummer came out the next Friday evening). Keep in mind we had lived there less than a month, and did not cause the clog. Carpets are old, stained and worn. No professional cleaning or painting is done prior to moving in. The manager is so lazy that he painted the ceiling around the blades of the ceiling fan! Our furnace was so old that no company in the U.S. made parts for it any longer. All repairs were jerry-rigged and welded together, and you had to pray it would continue to work. You knew it was working because when it fired up it sounded like an airplane taking off from the hallway. Forget leaving that thing on all night! Besides, the heat liked to rise up and escape through the ceiling to a better place somewhere in the sky. The closet doors are metal, dented, and some did not shut. The counter top in the kitchen has been painted over (you'll take out a chunk of paint if you drop anything). It was impossible to keep clean, since the dirt and the apartment had spent so much time together they didn't like to be apart. I stocked up on Stick-ups at the local Walmart to keep the nasty moldy smell in the cupboards and closets from invading the rest of the apartment. After 10 months of being told the bathroom would be fixed, we had the 1970's themed wallpaper completely stripped and sanded the walls. I painted over the entire room in two evenings. It was nice to have walls that weren't orange and green, and peeling apart. The apartment manager called me 4 months later to let me know he was ready to paint the bathroom. Cannot figure out what the guy does all day!

There are minimal laundry facilities (1 washer and 1 dryer per building - 10 units). There is a pool (although it's unheated and is condemned regularly). There are no noise ordinances in the agreement, and the apartment manager always wants you to talk to the tenant you are having a problem with instead of him talking to them himself. He wondered why I didn't go over an talk to my neighbors when they woke me at 3:00 am on a Tuesday with yet another party. With no insulation in place, there is no soundproofing between apartments, which makes things very noisy except in the dead of night (say, between 3:00-5:30 a.m.). The apartment manager will most likely argue with you about any complaints, regardless of the severity. You'll need to call the non-emergency police hot line to cure the shenanigans of your neighbors if you aren't in a quiet part. Most of the residents in my building are immigrants, are quiet, and keep to themselves.

 On the good side, it's fairly quiet if you live in the back of the building. Tenants receive 1 -2 covered parking spaces (based on rooms in apt) and 2-3 storage lockers. There is a water heater in each apartment, so you always have hot water. The location is wonderful- very central to life in M.V., P.A. and S-town, and no more than 2 miles to any of the freeways. The property management company is completely out of the picture. They think that Don, the manager, is doing a good job (??)."