Protected B.
Google
I’ve lived here for about four years now. The first apartment I was in, called The Imperial, is trash. The walls are thin as paper, and there are mice and roaches. The appliances are outdated. The maintenance staff is super polite, but they’re overworked—they have several buildings and hundreds of tenants to deal with, so I feel bad for them. The super leaves a lot to be desired: not polite, difficult to talk to, and often dismissive.
As for my new building, the apartment is huge. There are technical issues with the heat for about half of the tenants—some people’s heat doesn’t work at all, while others have too much heat. The elevators often break down. There also seems to be an issue with roaches and rodents, but I have cats, so I’m not really dealing with pests because they keep them away.
My personal issue is that I do love this building and our neighborhood and want to stay here for a while, but many of the newer tenants are extremely loud. They don’t understand common spaces or keeping their volume down. They play Bluetooth speakers in the hallway, physically fight, and smoke weed and other drugs in the hallway. The cops on my floor have been called several times in the last two months alone, not even counting the entire year. This place is becoming like a step up from a homeless shelter.
I understand that people are on programs and that there are people trying to get out of their situations, but there are also many people in this building and around the city who are on programs and have no motivation or interest in getting off them. These people do not have jobs, are not looking for jobs, are not in school, and are not trying to go to school. They’re taking free rent—which is a good program for people who are genuinely trying to get back on their feet—but then they allow their homeless friends to live in the building illegally and act a fool. It causes trouble and makes the environment unsafe for everyone, especially older residents and children. We shouldn’t have to put up with this.
I’ve made several attempts to speak to management about these issues, as have many other tenants, and they are dismissive. I’ve saved and copied emails about this. They tell us to call the police, who do nothing. I’ve had two serious incidents with neighbors. One man came banging on my door on a Sunday morning, accusing me of giving him bedbugs in his apartment—which I’ve never been to—and I’ve never even met him. He has mental health issues. One of the staff members told him which apartment I live in, which is insane and a major privacy issue.
Most disturbing were three separate occasions—each involving police—where a female neighbor downstairs, who clearly has mental health issues, threw human feces on my door. I caught her on video, called the police and management, and neither did anything. She was not evicted, and the police did not arrest her, even though I later looked up the laws and this is completely illegal.
No one is of any assistance: not the police, not management, not the landlords, not Kings and Queens Apartments. They simply moved me into another apartment to shut me up. Luckily, aside from the ongoing noise and volume issues, this particular building is generally safe.
I do not like people fighting or doing drugs in my hallway—you never know what could happen. Overall, I think this building is negligent and willing to take government-subsidized program money at the risk of the safety of residents who mind their business and just want to live in peace.
