I moved to Midtown Exchange Apartments! I'd lived in the neighborhood twice before so it was going back to something familiar and to live at the posh Midtown Exchange was exciting. It was more than double my rent in the suburbs, but I spent most of my time in the city so why not live there! There's an international market with groceries, and restaurants and goods to buy. There was free entertainment every week and I could get out to my other favorite places without having to ride a bus for an hour, just to get in the city.
Mine was a 600 sq ft loft in a historic building with hardwood floors, giant windows and very high ceilings. It had a kitchenette on one side of the room and an alcove for the bed and had a big handicapped accessible bathroom with a tub for $1,000/mo.
I stayed the first weekend I had keys at Midtown Exchange Apartments. It's wild at night. I'd been given a long list of rules when I moved in - no drug use, no smoking, quiet hours, we were not even to light candles in our units in case it might leave soot on the ceiling - and living there I realized they aren't really "rules" per se when I spoke to the people in the office Monday morning to ask about the "atmosphere" of food and open garbage bags thrown on the floor of the common area. No one had told me where to take my garbage. When I got to it, the garbage room was a small room with a garbage chute in the far wall, but on the floor between the door and the chute, people had just thrown their garbage in the room with the bags open or closed, there were packages of moldy food, broken toys. Awful. I called the office about that. They said it was normal and hard to stop residents from doing. They'd really appreciate it if I'd help throw away anything I saw.
Within the first few days, I knew I'd picked the wrong place. I let management know how unhappy I was and asked them to take action, but they told me that if they decided to take action, they wouldn't tell me about it out of sake of the other person's privacy. Then I found a homeless man sleeping in the laundry room when I popped in there to get a soda one night. He had to get through 2 locked doors with 2 different keys to get in there. When I called security, I was told our security team was located in the next city over and I'd have to call them between 6p - 6a if I wanted help, otherwise there is no security.
Homeless people started turning up regularly. Emails were sent out by building management telling people to stop propping open doors, stop jamming the locks to keep them open, etc. They even called in a local security company to check the stairwells multiple times per night for homeless. Better?
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| Folks that dropped diapers in the elevator |
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| Urine-soaked diaper |
I kept telling property management how disgusted I was with the place and how I planned to leave as soon as I could.
When I looked at The Exchange apartments they were in high demand and units would free up, then be gone the next day. I thought it was because it was such a choice place to live. Demand was driven because they could accommodate households up to 8 which was great for multi-generational families, but despite the size of the building, they had really high turnover.
