I lived in an apartment on 1830 Stevens Avenue from September, 1996 until November 2001. Until December of 2000, I had no major problems with the building& just the occasional leaks in the ceiling and minor plumbing issues.
On December 22, 2000, I came home from work and discovered there was no power in my kitchen. Upon calling the manager, I was told that the building had been sold and the new landlords would take care of it. This was the first I had heard of the buildings sale. I was told that I had probably blown a fuse and that someone would flip a switch and fix it. Two weeks later, and I still had no power in the kitchen. Whatever had been in the fridge previous to that was decomposing at a rapid rate.
I was finally given a new phone number for maintenance and told that maintenance requests would be handled on Tuesdays (!). But, it wasn't until January 9, 2001, that I returned home from work to find a note on the door from maintenance. It said that they had stopped by, but that they did not have a key, and thus couldn't do anything.
Finally a week later, I had power restored to my kitchen, plus a note saying that my refrigerator was "bad", (*When Refrigerators Go Bad& a new weekly series on Lifetime, for Women), I was not to touch it, and a new one had been ordered.
It wasn't until March that a new refrigerator finally arrived. In the meantime, the old one continued to sit in my apartment, attracting all kinds of insect life. My apartment filled with small flies. No one at UPI seemed the least bit concerned about this, and when the old refrigerator was finally removed, the removal left a sticky mess on the floor. There was no apology for the length of time it took to have the refrigerator replaced.
My building had a fire the summer before I moved out. To locate the source of the fire, the fire department kicked in all the doors on the second floor (including mine). I arrived home to find the maintenance guy (so that's what he looks like!) putting padlocks on the outside of my door. He was whining and complaining because the fire had interrupted his vacation.
As my door had been kicked in, there was also no way to lock it from the inside. I asked the maintenance guy to install a padlock on the inside, too, and he insisted that the chain lock would be sufficient to keep any intruders out. With the chain lock, the door could be opened a couple of inches, and as I lived in a studio, I did not appreciate the idea of someone being able to open my door at all.
It took a month to replace the door.
It took a month plus one day to replace the doorknob.
In the meantime a note was slipped under my door saying that because of the fire damage, I would have to relocate. In a panic, I called UPI and was told, "oops, ignore that, you don't have to relocate, we just gave everyone the same note."
As you can imagine, I felt so loved.
UPI did not apologize for the length of time it took to replace the door, or even check to see if how I was doing after the fire. Well, heck, they got the rent check for August, therefore, I must still have been alive, right?
A friend (who also lived in an Uptown Classic Apartment, at the time) locked herself out and asked to use my phone to call the maintenance line. Upon being informed by a recording that being locked out was not an emergency, she was given another number to call and informed that such a call would cost her 50 dollars.
The after-hours operator called the number of the locksmith provided by UPI.
This number had been disconnected.
Safety issues. A month or so before I moved out, someone was stabbed in our building. Previous to UPI's taking over the building, we would always have been alerted to security risk. Not this time&. It was only through a neighbor that I learned of this situation. Perhaps UPI does not consider a stabbing to be a safety issue. After all, the broken security buzzer, the burned out lights inside and outside the building, the un-shoveled sidewalks, and the abandoned pieces of carpet on the stairs were not considered to be safety issues either.
The previous in-building rental office was closed, the rent drop off box was boarded up, and when I dropped off my rent check at the UPI office, there was a sign on the door that said, "NO tenants may stop by without an appointment."
Once, I had a problem with a car parked in my space. I called Cedar towing and was told that nothing could be done without a special code. This was after hours, so I had to wait until the next day to get someone to call Cedar towing. I was told, "oh, the owner is the only person who has the code, and I haven't seen him."
Oh, and after all those problems, when it came time for my lease to be renewed, the rent went up by 225 dollars.