The Collective at Columbia — Local services in Columbia Township

Do. NOT. Live here. PLEASE do yourself a favor and do not be tricked by their amenities and false promises. Within 2 months of living here, our living room ceiling was caving in and drenching our living room from water that was leaking from my bathroom shower. I called and called for WEEKS and was told a different story every. single. time. It took them 10 WEEKS to finally resolve this issue. I was forced to share a bathroom with my roommate which was a huge invasion of privacy as well as an inconvenience for us BOTH. For the 2.5 months that I didn’t have access to my bathroom, not once did anyone apologize nor was my rent lowered (and yes, I asked for a discount considering the main reason we chose this place was so we could have separate bathrooms). Management at this location will avoid speaking to tenants at all costs and once you do finally speak to them, they will lie to you to get you off the phone ASAP. Every manager I spoke to while I lived here was incredibly rude and would rush me through conversation as fast as possible. They had no empathy and didn’t provide any solutions to our uncomfortable living situation. Not to mention they never fully cleaned or fixed where the water damage occurred. After talking to other tenants, we quickly realized we weren’t the only ones with this exact issue, and to no one’s surprise, it took months for all of the homes to finally be “fixed”. The homes are freezing downstairs and absolutely unbearably hot upstairs. Electric bills are through the roof because of the terrible air circulation in the townhomes. When I moved in the shelving in the closets were hanging off the walls, there were black marks, cobwebs, screws and nails all over the walls. There were sharp metal pieces sticking out of my carpet where it meets the flooring in the bathroom. The wood on the door frames was splintered out, damaged, and extremely sharp. ALL OF THE TOILETS HAD YELLOW AND ORANGE PEE STAINS. I had to clean the whole apartment my self upon moving in since they clearly didn’t bother. When there were issues with the apartment, management acted unprofessionally. In April, we were given a very short notice about maintenance installing HVAC systems in our homes. During this time we were woken up at 8am daily from maintenance hammering in our living room and kitchen. I came home multiple days to maintenance having left saw dust and plaster all over my bedroom and my bedding. I tried to register my ESA (dog) with management twice. I was told it takes “up to 3 weeks” for paperwork to process. I didn’t get a response for 3+ MONTHS. And when they did finally respond, they demanded I have my therapist fill out paperwork to explain what disability my ESA was treating (definitely walking the line with the FHA…) I was told my (fully documented) ESA wasn’t allowed to live in my home until the paperwork was processed… So, what was I supposed to do with him for 3+ months? When I made a written complaint about this matter I was ignored and still haven’t received a response. To top it off, the office threatened me with eviction for allowing my girlfriend to sleep over at my home. My girlfriend had proof of her lease in Columbia and we made sure to split our time at BOTH of our apartments. They never contacted me about the issue, they simply left me a notice saying I would be evicted if she wasn’t “evacuated”. This lease was the worst decision I have ever made and as a result my senior year of college was 10x more stressful than it needed to be. They were relentless and don’t care about anything other than money. I ended up moving out of this apartment 4 months before my lease ended because I couldn’t put up with the blatant disrespect from management as well as the lack of communication to tenants after we had reported issues. I lived at the Domain for 3 years before this & never had an issue, try them instead! EDIT: I just spent about 45 minutes reading other reviews as well as management’s responses to them. All I can say is WOW. Management here is vicious and completely lacks...

This is an honest review as of 2/2021

Elevate231 is definitely enticing with is great prices and huge community. The floorplans are great and give lots of space, and the included furniture isn't too bad either. However, there are some catches.

Within our first month of living here, our AC went out. Our specific unit in the attic has not been inspected since 2013, and maintenance took 4 days to get here. It was insanely hot in the house, and with all of our rooms upstairs, it was even worse at night trying to sleep. Once fixed, we got our utility bills for the month, and they were well over $100 for each of us, where as Elevate231 says they pay a portion from the start. This high price is all due to the very poor insulation all throughout our house. It is horrible at keeping hot or cold air in, and regularly requires AC or heat to be on constantly during the summer months.

As the winter approached, the same thing happened. Our heat went out, and maintenance took their time getting to us. This past winter, it got down to the negatives overnight, so heat was an absolute must. The strange thing is though, my room upstairs was crazy hot still, but downstairs it was an icebox. This is because the entire downstairs floor is concrete, which makes it absolutely frigid in the living room and kitchen. The thermostat is also downstairs, so whenever it drops one degree colder than the set temperature downstairs (which was every 10 minutes), it tells the heater to get hot, and blows plenty of heat upstairs and barely any downstairs for 15 minutes. This made the entire upstairs incredibly hot and the downstairs incredibly cold. Yet again, our utilities came in at yet another +$100 statement. The concrete floors are the weakness to the design of the house. During the summer, it stays cold downstairs and wont trigger the thermostat to turn on, so it gets incredibly hot upstairs. During the winter, it stays incredibly cold downstairs, and triggers the thermostat all the time to blow hot air upstairs, leaving it once again way too hot for comfortable living.

On the Elevate231 website, it promises "high speed internet" as well as a "gated community". These are both 100% false and should be taken off of the website, as it could be seen as false advertising. The current WiFi company at Elevate231 is Boingo. The WiFi network itself is unlocked and available for anyone to use, except that you need an account on the Boingo website to enter in the MAC address for every single device that requires internet on that router (computers, game systems, media streamers, phones). Personally, this is no problem to me what so ever. The issue is that the actual connection to the internet is absolutely horrid. For those who like numbers, I can average about 5 Mbps upload and around 30 or 40 Mbps for upload. These numbers are horrible. With this past semester being fully online for me, I have been kicked out of numerous tests on Canvas, and failed to upload assignments in time because it took hours to get online assignments done. Some of my devices could not even connect due to no security and weak bitrates. I immediately approached the management team about this, and their defense was that their new company, Juvilex, had apparently dropped them in their conversion over to their new internet services. They then proceeded to ask if I knew of any companies that could install WiFi to the neighborhood. This is a total embarrassment as a resident, knowing that your management team is completely dead in the water and has no clue who to call or what to do to fix it. The gates are the same story, they have not been operating since the summer, and have yet to get any progress done on them. There was a team that came and worked on them, but the gates have yet to be fixed. Multiple vehicles of residents have been broken into over the semester, and the security team has yet to do anything about it.

I am very disappointed with this facility and the management team. I highly recommend NOT signing here and looking...

Hi everyone reading these five star reviews! They’re fake! They give residents incentives to post them to receive something! Now let’s getting the real business of it all. Don’t live here. Don’t give them your money, you can spend it anywhere else and get much better results. Management will play games in your face, like they did in my face. Starting with me not even living there yet, me and 3/4 roomates signed a lease for a four bedroom. We have this lease signed for months. They call us day before Christmas saying “You can’t live in a four bedroom with your roomates, we overbooked, you can live in a four bedroom with random roomates or live in a three bed and the rent be… 100 dollars more.” Mind you i signed a lease for 630, they now want me to pay 730, and when i mentioned that they say “oh we can do 680” you can but i can’t. So the day after Christmas, me and all of roommates went and visited them in person! Had a nice chat, ended with okay so basically i’m going to sublease my apartment and not live here because this isn’t right. Then boom! days later the issue is solved, and i get to live with my preferred roomates. Okay! Now to living in The Collective. At the time i lived there the AC was impeccable, almost too cold, but then they installed new air conditioning right before i left and my house would not go below 72 degrees! and would set itself to 85 when i left!😂 Next we also have the utility bills that they like to blame on the governor, because the houses are so poorly insulated, the walls are so high, and the flooring is concrete, OUR UTILITY BILL WAS 150 dollars. PER person. 600 dollar utility bill for a four bedroom house. ain’t that something? and again the collective will always blame the governor❤️ Continuing on, the collective also raised their rent by like 100-150 dollars, yet the only thing they added to the homes to make it “worth” that raise was add 28 dollar all-weather boxes from amazon, they’re like thin plastic, if people really wanted that they would buy it… and don’t come on here and say “well they added the whole new lock system where it’s on ur phone” yeah… you think that adds value to the property… now if my phone dies i can go perch in front of the leasing office and wait to get in my house… if only there was something to let me in that wouldn’t die… i personally like finished floors or insulation, that really adds to the value of the home. also don’t mention that they fixed the roads… if they’re fixed why are they still bumpy!! in my closing topics i’d like to talk about the scams they do, whether it’s an accidental 5 dollar late fee even though I wasn’t late, or adding valet trash your forced opted in and you can only fit 2 bags in ur bin and can’t put anything on top or you’ll get fined even though there’s dumpsters every 30 ft, why do we need valet trash, and this is just a conspiracy theory truly but why is everyone implanting renters insurance, like yes its good but why now and not before, maybe a law changed who knows. Finally, you won’t get your security deposit back, even though the house was spotless and deep cleaned to a tee and nothing was broken. all of your roomates will be changed the exact same, cleaning fee cleaning fee yada yada. but i would like to highlight. according to RSMo Section 535.300 which is also mentioned in the lease, a landlord can legally deduct from a security deposit, but only if it’s beyond the means of “ordinary wear and tear”. (like damages, stains so and so) so i reached out! and yeah… another badabing badaboom moment something magically fixed and i can get 75 dollars back… also ordinary wear and tear is up to the landlord (that’s what a collective property manager said) so someone please send me the landlords email bc i have a question!!! but yeah, EVERYONE REAXH OUT TO THEM CONFRONT THEM THEY MIGHT CHANGE SOMETHING! collective if you changed it for me. change it for everybody else please. in conclusion. live somewhere else! its probably nicer and better and cheaper and...