I wanted to reply to this previous post. I have to concur with most of the list items mentioned here, except for the fact that the appliances are 30 years old. My roomates and I are renting a renovated apartment, with newer appliances.
Unfortunately they have raised the rent on everyone pretty significantly. Even those tenants who have lived here 20 years, many elderly people who were forced to move out, because they jacked up the rent so much.
Its true that the management does spend an exhorbinant amount of time making sure the lobby sparkles, I see the same man polishing those floors nearly everyday. But if you take a closer look, look at the age of the windows in this place. Plus there is at least 3 computers broken at any given time, and they usually stay broken for 30 days or longer. Moreover, they now charge newcommers utilities, because the management feels they can. I can only assume people will pay this for the close proximity to DC.
All in all I like living here, but I doubt my roomates and I will be able to continue to live here once our lease expires. Our last renewal increase was about $625.00, and there is no doubt in any of our minds that they will jack up our rent at least 30%. Tenant loyalty means nothing to Charles Smith.
IN RESPONSE TO:
After signing a one year lease and putting up with construction, poor maintenance, declining quality of staff and a kitchen with appliances put in over thirty years ago they raised the rent over $600.00 per month!They didn't even give me 60 days notice of the increase before my lease was up then gave me a hard time because I didn't give them 60 days notice.Now I'm told I can vacact on Sept 30 but they want rent to Oct 9!Residents are so irritated with this place they are putting notices and asking everybody to withold rent until the max time to hurt management. Stay away from this place--they might smile when you sign up then they bait you BIG increases in rent at the first opportunity.When I moved in the manager said rent would not be increased more than 5%--nice story but it was raised by 28%!