Residência de estudantes Livensa Living Porto Boavista — Hotel in Porto

I lived in Livensa Living Porto Boavista for six months (Feb-Jul 2023) and I can tell that it is the right place to meet people and make friends, also thanks to the activities the residence organises, such as cooking workshops, yoga and pilates, parties. Furthermore, it has many study areas, a gym, a cinema, dining and gaming rooms, but no sauna anymore cause it caught fire… Closeby there are many supermarkets, bars, pharmacies, so also the location is nice, besides the huge cemetery flanking the residence, visible from the windows of every room of that side. Then, some more other things that could be useful to know: in the rooms the lightning is not good to let you study, and it’s not good in the common library either; the room’s tap tube and the tap ittself are unstable and loosen often; the shower leaks (I reported it on the portal several times, they said it was fixed but it was not); the windows do not fully open, only a bit; when you first arrive in your room you have nothing, not even a pillow and sheets, a cup, or hangers, so you have to buy every basic yourself; there is the possibility to use some cleaning supplies, but they never have battery + they can be booked for max one hour, but once someone kept it for nine hours, and the receptionists did not do anything because they didn’t even know who had it, so no one was fined, despite the fact that me and other people needed it: so my question is, why do you have all the booking dynamic and the fining procedure, if then you don’t take action? And now the worst part: the cleaning of the common areas, which is simply deplorable. For example, the borders of the swimming pool are covered with dead flies, weird stains, spider webs and more; or the worst which is the laundry, an area that should be more than clean, but which is always full of hairballs, dust, etc. Once, I entered the laundry the second after the cleaning staff supposedly vacuumed it and it was disgusting. The hallways and the emergency stairs are also always dirty, and in the common toilets there is never hand paper. My stay in Livensa Living Porto Boavista was a good experience, but I feel like future students like me, who are planning to live here, should know all...

The biggest mistake with my Erasmus in Portugal was staying at Livensa (Jan-June 2021).

The worst thing is that when you sign the contract it’s impossible to get out. It felt like I was in a prison. Because nothing was like I thought it would be.

For the extremely high price you don’t get even half of what you think, especially not during Covid-19 restrictions. And listen to this: we had to pay extra 20€ to have a friend sleep over for a couple of hours after a night out (if our rooms even had an empty extra bed). We were students - it makes no sense at all to not be able to invite anyone to “our home”.

Even when the restrictions allowed bigger groups than 8 people to gather, residents could never bring more than one visitor to “our home”. This even though we lived 30 people in a place built for 800. Also I never even saw the sauna, and only had change to use the pool for 1 month because it was always under construction or closed. Also the Wi-Fi stoped working very often when we had online classes.

Even though the rooms are nice, you need to bring ALL of the equipment you need in a home by yourself. Even a pillow. For the price that we payed it should definitely be included. The mattress is supposed to be “high quality” but I still got back problems because it was to poor quality.

The staff is nice, but very close friends which effected me as a resident. They always made me feel like it was “me” and “them”. NEVER did I feel like we were a family, like they say in all the marketing. I never felt completely comfortable or safe at Livensa:

This is only a few examples of all the disappointments with Livensa

I have written this review now when my contract with Livensa is over, because I was too scared of the consequences to write it when I still lived there. Because the staff have all the power to do whatever they want in “our home”.

I would never recommend anyone to sign a contract...

Many of livensa problems should have been solved before the opening, for instance the many water problems, internet problems, the promise of a trash room that was never fulfilled and many other...

I lost my access card once and when i tell them that the payment via web is not working they don't make enough effort to fix it, but clearly for payments they are efficient but everything else they are not...

They have very bad management when it comes to visits even with the pandemic situation, this should have been better planned. They did not comply with all that we signed in the contract and worry about many unnecessary things for the "good being of the residents" when in truth none of the residents care, in fact, many times someone pointed there discontent they are unable to respond or at least admit that the solutions they offer are insufficient and/or bad.

I think they´ve crossed limits of abuse. They confiscated my clean cooking stuff from the kitchen because someone left dirty dishes in there and "they didn't know if it belonged to the same person or not".

In a nutshell, they say that you are part of the "livensa family" but in truth you are a prisoner to...