University Village Towers — Attraction in Riverside

Not recommended! The company/management is terrible. They even removed themself from the Yelp review, which they only got 1.9 stars, and said they're closed. Funny.

Mails system: if you moved out and your mails that were yet to be forwarded and were sent to them, they will return them to senders without telling you even though you tried to forward all the mails, and you have to figure that out yourself with the cost and other inconvenience stuff. Room: you can smell weeds from the AC vent, and the cost is similar to that of another place. AC often needs to be fixed. I only like the maintenance man there (He's bald & maybe in his 50s/60s); he's good and on time. Washers/dryers in another room, a long walk if your room is far from it, often broken and leaking water. Parking: You pay for your parking spot, and there will be ppl parking on your spot. When you tell the leasing office, they will tell you, "Nothing we can do about it." Check-in: They will have you check in your room yourself. This is when it comes to the tricky part. Be nit-picky because they will be nit-picky on all things when you move out. Move-out charge: MAKE SURE YOU WALK THROUGH THE INSPECTION AFTER MOVING OUT WITH THEM. THEY WILL TRY TO OFFER YOU THAT YOU DON'T NEED TO WALK THROUGH WITH THEM, BUT PLEASE DO IT TO SAVE YOURSELF LATER!!! I didn't want to inconvenience them, so I cleaned and inspected my room myself and left. They sent me a fee later for the carpet damage of $75 and other stuff of about $5, with photos that showed the tub and a corner of the desk on which I couldn't find any scratch or anything. I have to guess what they are trying to show: 3 pictures of the wall (I barely touch the walls) and a blank picture of something. No carpet picture, NO CARPET PICTURE. I called and emailed them to send me the picture of the carpet, and they sent me the same images with the blank pictures and no carpet pictures. It is complicated to communicate with the UVT management. A year later, I received an email from a collection debt. That's right. Without a call or an email from this UVT management, they send you directly to the collection debt. I reached out to the UVT nicely and asked them to send me the carpet picture, which I was waiting for, but they said, we don't deal with this anymore, you can contact the collection debt. I reached out to the collection debt and they said the UVT said they had sent me proof already. That's suck! Is it the same blank proof? I couldn't do much since UVT said they had already sent me the proof! It sucks that this UVT management is tricking college students and unreasonably messing with their credit scores. The rep from the collection debt said she saw many of these cases and that this kind of company often does that to college students. So this is so common that I need to tell...

I have lived here for the past year since I was slowly running out of options and was desperate for a place. All the other 1 star reviews on yelp were really accurate. Living here was the worst mistake I could have made.

These are just a FEW examples out of many many more:

our apartment started off with the previous tenant's mess when we first moved in, there was no clear space in the living room and the kitchen counter was full of trash that they left behind

we asked for multiple maintenance fixes, but they never did anything, the fridge had rust near the water dispenser and will probably stay there for the next victims

problems with trying to communicate with management, especially tim "Tim, specifically, has a terrible attitude problem. He is completely unfit to be a manager. The least he could do is act like he cares, but when you are speaking to him, he acts very bothered and annoyed that you even came in with your problems. I asked if I could speak to him in his office, and his responses were very insincere and rude. He was very dismissive of my problems, and did not seem like he cared at all." -another tenant

they charged me after I left for "cleaning fees", even though my room was cleaner than they left it for me to move into, they'll probably just charge me and do nothing about it and let the next victim move in just to rob them of their money too

theres also the issue with safety, the gates have broken locks, so that you can just push the door open and anybody could get in to the complex be right outside your door (ive seen random tweakers wander inside), and someone recently got mugged in the uvt parking lot even though theres a security guard watching the parking lot

the only good thing about this place is the shuttle that takes you to ucr, and even then whoever designed the bus schedule had some screws loose. the bus leaves uvt every x:05 and x:35 and gets to winston chung at x:10 and x:40, so you would always have to go early or always be 5-10 mins late to your class. then to go from ucr to uvt, the bus goes around campus from winston chung to the flagpole with stops in between and finally leaves campus at x:26 and x:56 so that when you finish class, you have to wait a whole 30 minutes for the bus to take you back or walk which takes less than half that time.

PLEASE FOR YOUR OWN GOOD DO...

Dana and her staff are awesome, some of the coolest and most accommodating residential people I've met. The maintenance crew are also pretty awesome, they were always very respectful of your space and time and they were incredibly helpful. The place does kind of feel like a resort, it's overall a pretty nice place.

As for the complaints about the front desk services provided, I never really understood the stigma. Yes their front desk closes a little earlier than I would like but they hand you your packages immediately and they don't go through the unnecessary labor of filing each package and processing them to no avail. Also Dana was awesome! Yes she is assertive, but she was never rude or disrespectful. She was incredibly helpful and understanding and there were times when she went the extra mile to make sure her residents were well taken care of.

One thing to note is UVT has probably the best view of any student living complex in the area (on campus residences included). You get views of palm trees and resort like residences as well as a view into the skyline of downtown Riverside if your residence faces that direction. UVT is fairly close to Stater Bros, Walgreens, and Food 4 Less so grocery shopping is always pretty solid. You're also right next to UV so you'll always have something to eat (give Uncle Chuang's bakery a holler). Most busses come directly to the door of the building so if you like hitting the downtown area or if you don't want to walk to campus then there's always the bus.

My only concern is that there is no overhead lighting in some of the units' bedrooms, but a tabletop SKURUP lamp from IKEA will nullify the issue entirely (any lamp with a bulb that emits 550lm of light or more will be more than enough, make sure to get a tabletop lamp though). Also get a fan because Riverside gets hot regardless of where you are, but UVT does use ecobee thermostats which are great for the environment but sometimes you just need a little more ventilation.

The furniture is pretty sturdy, my personal favorites are the huge and plush leather couches in the living rooms. Seriously those things are incredibly comfortable.

Great choice if you want to...