Hamilton Court — Local services in Philadelphia

Last week, I became one of the many displaced residents of the Mason on Chestnut after a water pipe burst and water began leaking/flooding across all 14 floors.

Students, nurses, doctors, friends. We all needed to find new homes, as we were all forced to leave over several days at all hours of the day and night. If you were one of the poor souls who had to leave at midnight-1 AM, then booking an Airbnb was much harder, and many of the Airbnbs available were grossly overpriced. And that's on top of (American) Airbnb fees generally being fairly exorbitant. Airbnb refunds aren't immediate. Haven't gotten paid yet because this situation happened in the middle of the week? That's not management's problem. Good luck.

The city shut the Mason down, and cops were threatening to send in SWAT to drag the stragglers out so they wouldn't have to keep coming back. Calling the situation a mess would be an understatement. Both previous management and current management (Who have been managing the Mason for just a few weeks, if you can call what they're doing managing) have completely failed their former residents in one of worst instances of managerial incompetence I've ever seen.

I stayed at the Mason as long as I could to have more time to figure out my next move and hope that management would resolve the problem. It didn't happen, and I was left scrambling. That was until I met Nijah and William.

Nijah and William stopped by the Mason on Chestnut on the second day after the water pipe burst and let me and other residents know about the housing opportunities available at Hamilton Court. They were gracious enough to offer a special deal for displaced residents of the Mason, and the offer was too good for me to pass up. I stopped by HC the next morning, and William gave me the grand tour. I came back in the afternoon, and Nijah helped me with the application process after William had to go out.

I moved in several days later than I initially planned, in the evening, on Juneteenth, a federal holiday. Luckily for me, Nijah was there and helped get me situated with my keys and showed me my room. She was the only one still there, and given Juneteenth is a federal holiday, she easily could've left earlier than she did, but she stayed behind to help me out.

I'm at a pretty important moment in time in my life right now, and I really need to hunker down and get done what needs doing. The last thing I need is for my life and residence to get uprooted because of incompetent property managers too hands-off to notice problems and/or too cheap to fix them.

As the Mason on Chestnut management exemplifies, people are not obligated to go out of their way to help people, and the sad reality is most people don't. There's no incentive to do so, and unless a carrot or stick is involved, most don't go the extra mile for people outside their family/close friends.

Nijah and William did.

More than once. And they don't know me from Martha Stewart.

At least I don't think either of them know Martha Stewart.

(I have to shout out Marcus too, as he was the Sixth Man in this who helped carry it home.)

Nijah, William, Marcus, I can't thank you enough for helping me out. I'm looking forward to seeing you around and to...

I have zero good things to say about HamCo. The list of egregious problems with the building and management goes on forever. Don't believe the fake advertising on their website. A very condensed run-down of how disgusting and not worth your time or money this place is:

Saying that the building is "renovated" is a blatant lie. For example, the plumbing is atrocious. The shower alternates between scalding and freezing, and the sink overflows. This isn't to say that I never called maintenance--I did on several occasions. The most hilarious culmination is when construction workers from the floor below mine entered my unit without notifying me in advance because the tub was leaking through the floors.

The property managers are difficult to deal with. There have been many times that I received less than 24 hours notice for things like electricity/water shutdown, construction, etc. In fact, I notified the management office in advance about my move-out requiring working elevators. Lo and behold, the day before my move-out date, we were notified about an electricity shutdown. Not only that, but my movers had nowhere to put their truck because of the excessive construction in the building. When I consulted the managers about the parking situation, they said I should be fine (should is a word that they love to use). I wasn't. The employees of HamCo don't care about their residents at all.

The list goes on and on. The rent continues to skyrocket with amenities included that don't actually exist. My building no longer has a gym and laundry room, both of which were removed without notification.

There is no reason anyone should give money to this scam of a place. Hopefully this review prevents you from making the same mistake I did. I'm finally leaving ShamCo, and it's the happiest...

in case you needed a list of reasons not to live here:

miserable plumbing construction issues that should have been resolved years ago, resulting in waking up nearly every morning before my alarm pool is tiny and useless, not feasible to use during most of the year constant heating issues, most at times when the temperature was below 30 degrees inefficient, dirty windows which bring in wind despite "winterproofing" efforts constant water heating issues, at one time going 5 days without water shower temperature limited to either freezing or scalding no garbage disposals as promised trash left in lobby or around building due to distance from dumpsters dust left all over apartment every time construction happens insufficient notice before construction, kicking us out multiple times at 9am security which has made me feel uncomfortable, and less safe rodent problems which were never followed up on gigantic, bulky window A/C units left in apartment rather than being removed even after requesting their removal and finally, ratings padding as indicated by leasing agents and soon-to-be residents giving positive reviews, painting a false picture of this miserable place

tl;dr: i lived here for two years, and while my apartment is spacious and homey, it is absolutely not worth the litany of problems that...