The Essential — Local services in San Diego

It's that time around spring semester where people start looking for housing. Now about this place: Literally, just live somewhere else. ANYWHERE else. This place is expensive, but so is everywhere else in close proximity of SDSU. You can get so much more ANYWHERE else for the same prices. I only lived here because previous living arrangements fell through and I was nervous not having a secure living arrangement before the school year needed. I

While the staff is usually professional and nice if you have a simple question, if you have a problem within your unit, good luck dealing with the staff if you have a tougher issue. (Details below) I can't blame 95% of them though, since it's not their fault they don't have the authority to do much about things directly. It's just frustrating when you need something resolved.

Get ready for paper thin walls. Good luck if you have a neighbor (like I did) who'd play music and shout all day and all night, regardless if it was "quiet hours" or not. Despite the lease saying under Section 17, "Conduct and Compliance with Agreement" bulleted, "May not create a nuisance on the Residence or Property, and may not disturb other Property residents or neighbors with excessive noise (loud televisions, stereos, voices, etc.) or otherwise;." which had nothing related to quiet hours. If you end up being the only person hearing it because you share a thin wall, have fun being "politely" implicated as a liar in their emails. According to the marketing manager, my reports have been recorded, but according to the property manager, there have been no reports about this. Despite another staff member saying they've "seen" the report, right to my face. So what's the truth? Why don't I move rooms you ask? It's an "affordable" $400 just to move. Oh yeah, I didn't pick the placement of my room either.

I don't believe that apathy gets anything done, so I've continuously corresponded with them for months. Emails will continuously be ignored and you'll be threatened with "discussing your residency" with them by the property manager to keep you silenced for the rest of your lease while your neighbor continues playing and singing along all day and all night.

Oh not to mention a loose pipe that was hitting the frame of the wall, (according to what they've told me). This happens around times of 7 pm, 9 pm, 11 through 2 am. I actually have sound recordings. My "FAVORITE" time this happened was 3 am and 5am. I sleep with EAR PLUGS. Why am I awake? It wakes me up. It's THAT loud. They said was a "priority" and had a similar issue last year with another unit. Oh great. Now I have to worry about pipes bursting within the walls of my units. Fun. After 5 weeks of winter break, nothing has been done. Despite being told there were going to be "updates" I decided to wait patiently for those weeks. I communicated everything I could. I received absolutely no updates. And of course not, because there was nothing done. The first thing I heard coming into my apartment, was my "favorite" sound of the pipe banging on the frame, reminding me that they had done nothing about it. For 5 weeks, mind you, I'd already mentioned this to them WEEKS BEFORE.

Don't be fooled by their recent renovations, for some reason prioritizing the looks of the properties have taken precedence over, say fixing why the trash room in the buildings flood every time it rains, unit issues. Granted, it doesn't rain often, but the effects of the rain will last in the hallways for at least a couple weeks. While they try hard to dry it up and place a fan and towels, blocking the thin hallways and placing an extremely loud fan is quite the inconvenience for a couple weeks. Oh and it smells like a rotten aquarium.

At this point, I feel like I've done all I could to TRY and resolve things with them. But now it's my turn to warn anyone looking at this place. If you've seen my yelp review, you'd know I'd left some things out. Not because they resolved it, but because of the character limit. Learn from my mistakes. Anyway, yeah. Live...

Had a friend living here until recently, and remembered I lived here too. Was here from August 2021 - December 2022.

The first few months Aug-Dec 2021 were great. Fantastic management. Great benefits. Ty and Jacob were amazing.  However, I was not pleased with the sudden switch in management from Jan 2022 and onward. Many rule changes with little to no notice.

** The amount you pay for rent is not worth it without easy access to a kitchen. And it does not allow anything like toaster ovens, hot plates, etc. to accommodate not having one. Big fines if you are caught with one in your apartment. And on top of that: The ‘communal kitchen’ is not open 24 hours.

** Other tenants had a habit of not throwing garbage away correctly, causing entire floors to smell awful and attract a ton of fruit flies. Multiple complaints to the leasing office. It would be cleaned for a week or 2, then start up again.

** There are also mandatory, monthly inspections as if it were a college dormitory. And would not make accommodations if I felt more comfortable being present while they were doing this. There is no reason they should be coming in this often to ‘check the alarms’. It’s BS.

** FYI to any disabled folk out there, this is not a very accessible location. The elevator breaks down sometimes and is left unfixed for days to weeks at a time. None of the doors are automatic, and they are all very heavy. The only accessible thing here is the wheelchair ramps. And regarding the parking spots, people park on the blue cross-hatched spots all the time! And do not move for several hours.

** You are only able to access the front entrances and personal apartment with your key. Zero access is given for entrance through the backdoors in the alleyway. You have to walk around the block in order to get back inside.

** Multiple complaints about loud neighbors. Especially during midterms and finals. Nothing was done about it.

** There's a no smoking policy inside the apartment. People do it anyway. If the smell of marijuana or tobacco bothers you, or if you're asthmatic, do not live here. We have had people set off the fire alarms in the middle of the night on more than one occasion.

** Posted hours for the leasing office were never reliable. They say they will be open until 6 M-F, but the office would already be closed by 3 or 4. Due to my work and school schedules, many of my packages were held hostage for several days and was never able to get help when I needed.

** Two of the front entrance locks have been broken for months. Very easy for strangers to not only enter the common areas but get inside the building as well without a key. Not very safe!

Glad to be out of there. This is a great place if you need to be close to campus. But that's the only benefit I can think of. If you have a car or are able to commute through public transit, don't waste your time here. I don’t think it’s worth it unless you really desire the convenience of it.

The only thing I was pleased with my entire stay were the maintenance and cleaning staff. Really nice people and extremely helpful. Massive shout...

I don’t recommend. This place has a lot a potential (and both positives & negatives) but I don’t know what happened this past year. The management changed, my first lease was under Joe, then he left and was replaced by Ty, who I was under for this last lease. This last time they really screwed me over for “carpet replacement” and “wall repainting” this time and never even sent me the paperwork until I was in collections. They sent the letter to my address at the Suites, you know, the one I had just moved out of. I barely lived there my second year there because I moved in with my boyfriend, but I had been really friendly with everyone at the office so I can’t believe they sent me one email then were like “oh hey we sent you to collections”.

I’m sure they have another story and will display below here, but be careful here guys. The new management is really shady. I am pretty positive they are trying shady ways to get money from people because they didn’t get that many leases this fall since we are all studying from home with covid. I’m positive.

It is super shady and I’m bummed and shocked because I thought I would be there until I graduated. I wouldn’t trust them to not screw you over if they need the money and if they think you won’t be renewing your lease. They have all these lies about why my their charges were never sent to me. They put absolutely no effort at all. I don’t know why. I DID notice to vacate and NO I didn’t get your emails! But screwing up my credit, charging me a ton of money, shutting me out completely, considering how things are right now? It’s too bad they are like this.

Positives: location, a food place if you are feeling lazy, they let you print schoolwork

Negatives: the size of the space, the amenities you lose (vs an apartment) - the mini fridge instead of a fridge can drive you crazy, it gets loud, really loud, they only care about the money and it’s really obvious, the food at the bistro has a lot of flavor but is really unhealthy

Oh and I didn’t have air conditioning all of last year! They sent in a portable after months and months of complaining. It took up a lot of space that I couldn’t really afford to lose.

I don’t think anyone other than naive freshman...