This is an incredibly unsafe area, but no one will tell you that when you move in. My apartment was broken into 3 times. The first time, I was at home sleeping in the middle of the night. The guy came in through my roommate’s bedroom window. Luckily I had locked my bedroom door that night, and he didn’t attempt to break it in. He left without taking anything, which was the most disturbing part. I only found out someone had been there the next morning because my front door was open, there were leaves in front of my roommate’s bedroom window, and the screen had been pried off.
The second time someone broke in, they came in through the sliding glass door in the back. The lock was not working, and we had asked them to fix it before, but they told us to make sure the “security bar” was in place. They never fixed our lock. We put the security bar down, but the door is so flimsy, you can actually separate the panes of glass with your hands, stick a ruler or a wire in and pop the bar up. This time, my roommate was home sleeping by herself. Her door was locked, so he didn’t come into her bedroom, but he stole her laptop from the living room. She found out about it the next morning when her laptop was gone, her purse had been rummaged through, and she noticed the bar on the sliding glass door had been popped.
At this time, we began to consider moving, and breaking our lease. Before we made up our mind about it, though, someone broke in a third time. This time, my roommate and I were both home. My roommate’s door was not locked, and she had her laptop (which was replaced by insurance) sitting on her bed next to her. She woke up and saw a strange man in her doorway. He lunged at her, she started screaming, he grabbed the laptop off her bed, and ran out. I woke up to her screaming “GET OUT! GET OUT! OH MY GOD! GET OUT!” There was no way we could sleep in that apartment after that, so we started moving our stuff out the very next day.
Dealing with the management after that was almost laughable. They have some sort of corporate bureaucracy, which doesn’t allow the property management to make any decisions for themselves, and they will never let you talk to anyone who can make a decision. The corporate office (Aimco) decided that we should still have to give 60 days’ notice. They’re only concerned with squeezing every penny they can out of their residents. We can’t sleep there anymore. My roommate only feels safe sleeping in her dad’s house now, and she still has trouble sleeping. They didn’t fix our locks (do they want us to stay there for 60 days without them fixing the lock??). When we told them about the break-ins, there was no concern for us. They didn’t come look at our apartment the first two times. The only reason they came to look at it the third time was because we wanted to move out (again, concerned only for their loss of income).
The break-ins are not the only issues on the property either. Our apartment, along with our neighbor’s apartment, had glue coming up out of the “hardwood floors” for month. It ruined our rugs, got on our clothes and furniture. They kept promising us they would replace the floors, but it never happened. Of all of my neighbors I got to know, I don’t know anyone who was satisfied. In the beginning, sure, it seems like a really nice place to live, it’s in a good part of town, but the honeymoon phase ends quickly, and residents are left with the realization that the property is poorly managed, and the only thing they care about it is getting as much money as they can out of the poor chumps who signed leases with them, regardless of what is their fault, and what is fair. If you still want to live there, I recommend you get a security system, and an attorney.
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