Vantage Point

Horrible! Run away and don't look back!

(written Jan 16th, updated & revised on Jan 30th)

It used to be pleasant to live here with the occasional issue as I'm sure any rental has. My boyfriend and I have lived here since July 2005. Since the good manager quit (Dan) and the good assistant manager was fired (Erin) in the summer of 2007, this place has gone downhill. The new assistant manager (Reynolds) let some extremely dirty people move in behind us. They gave us bed bugs and I have never seen so many roaches IN MY LIFE! The exterminator AND the new manager, Patrick, told me the people behind me were the problem and the exterminator told me personally that we are not the problem as our place is always clean. Did the dirty people get evicted? NO. I don't even want to go through the long list of BS we had to go through to get rid of the bed bugs, it was awful! We ended up having to throw out our box spring. Did Vantage Point compensate us in any way? NO. They waited a whole month and a half for the problems to get worse and worse before I finally hear last Friday (early January) that those dirty dirty people are getting kicked out. Low and behold, I got bit again and we had to go through the bed bug mess ALL OVER AGAIN! The assistant manager, Reynolds, assured me, TWICE that it would be taken care of on Friday Jan 18th. My boyfriend works from home starting at 2pm. I advised Reynolds of this TWICE and both times he assured me it would be taken care of before then. On Friday, Jan 18th my boyfriend calls me at 1pm to tell me that the exterminator has not shown up yet and he was told we'd have to wait until Wednesday the following week. Our entire apartment was bagged, boxed up and sealed in plastic in a pile in the living room and they were going to make us wait after assuring us TWICE that it would be done on Friday morning?!? I contacted the manager, Patrick, and reminded him of the hell we had to go through to get our apartment ready and was finally able to work out an agreement to have the exterminator come early Saturday morning (the following day). I had to spend over $30 in quarters (each time) to wash everything in my apartment and it cost hours of both mine and my boyfriend's time. Patrick told me he'd try and compensate me somehow on cheaper rent for the month of February, but it felt like he was just placating me to get me off the phone. Of course he came back and said no. I have a feeling he didn't even ask his superior.
Over the summer they put new siding on the buildings, just covering up the rotting, disgusting wood that had numerous holes and patches because of the squirrels. During our first winter here, a squirrel actually burrowed it's way into our apartment through the living room wall. The parking lot lights were damaged somehow during the addition of the new siding and were out for a MONTH! Sometimes I get home from work and leave for work when it is dark. It is not a "high end" neighborhood, nor is it really bad, but it freaked me out every time I had to go into that dark parking lot by myself. Even after calling the office several times to complain, they ignored me and the problem.
Nobody ever answers the emergency pager. We went without electricity for an entire weekend last summer. Everything in our refrigerator spoiled. The same weekend we found the bed bugs (the first time, in December), our kitchen sink literally exploded (and we didn't even touch it. I'm glad we were home!) As our kitchen was flooding and running down into the apartment below us, nobody was answering the emergency pager. Luckily, another friend of ours in the building was friends with one of the off duty maintenance guys who came and fixed the problem. Our carpet was wet for several days and our apartment smelled like mildew for over a week... it was disgusting. Currently, I haven't been able to take a hot shower in nearly two weeks and I've actually taken cold showers for the last two days. I even called the office yesterday to tell them and never heard back. I just took another cold shower and killed a giant roach crawling on the wall. I've had it! Oh, and the disgusting people we share this building always leave the laundry room trashed, never clean out the lint traps and some un-fit mother let her child climb all over the machines. There have been child sized muddy footprints all over that room (the machines, the walls, the windows) for a while now and nobody has cleaned it!

How can you expect people to live in these conditions? I at least believe I deserve some sort of compensation for what I've had to go through. Per the tenants rights law, the landlord's job is to provide a safe and healthy environment living up to health code standards (bed bugs & roaches?) as well as hot & cold running water. Today is January 30, 2008. I am currently late for work because I have not had hot water all morning and need to shower as I work in a professional office building. The hot water issue has been going on for weeks and it has gotten to the point where I wanted to take this to the next level and make you aware of what is going on here.