Aldercrest Apartments

** WARNING: NEW MANAGEMENT **

This is my fifth year living at Aldercrest. The first four years were amazing and I recommended this building to many people because the landlord, Vicki, was absolutely wonderful. In the summer of 2012, the management changed hands, which meant all new staffing and since then, this place I once called home is no longer that. Our property managers are great, but the portfolio manager, could care less about the people living inside the building.



Once the new management stepped in, they took the time to paint the building, inside and out, and it looks great. They also raised the rent an insane amount without adding any perks. One of the biggest downfalls is the unsafe neighborhood, which I worry about from time-to-time, especially when doors are wedged open late at night. This allows anoyone to enter the building. They also took away courtesy garbage bins, so people throw their trash on the ground inside the building.



All in all, these people worry more about how it looks on the outside rather than what goes on in the inside. For example, with the old managers, there was a noise curfew and other rules set in place, which were just common courtesy. Under the new management, there have been numerous times where people living below me smoke cigarettes and weed inside their unit, which then gets filtered into my unit. These people often have gatherings and parties in their unit and are extremely loud during the weekdays, when people like myself have to get up early and work the following day.



When I report these issues, the property manager does her best to fix the problem and then she often reports it to the portfolio manager due to the severity of the issue. The portfolio manager is not receptive to the complaints about these problems that repeatedly occur. Her solution is to issue a 10-day notice, which is like an empty threat because it won't ever lead to eviction. The portfolio manager rarely ever replies to voicemails or emails and when I do speak with her, she is very rude and only speaks down to me - very disappointing and not to mention a poor representation of the Pacific Crest brand.



When I constantly here loud noises, fighting and smell weed and cigarettes in my apartment coming from the people down below, the portfolio manager tells me that they can not do anything because there is no proof. I would love to call her any time between 10 pm - 4 am when these problems occur, but of course she doesn't answer her phone. She instructs us to call 911 - not even the non-emergency number - but what she doesn't realize is that either the cops won't come because it's not as serious as other calls they receive, or they will come and then issue a fine to my roommate and I because it's not an actual emergencey in their eyes. Who will pay that fine? The portfolio manager needs to come up with real solutions.



I am looking forward to when my lease is up in the summer because I would never pay this much money to live in a place where I am not taken seriously and treated poorly by the higher management. Yes it looks good and has nice units, but it's what is underneath the surface that matters, and in this case it's management who does not handle problems properly and speak to tenants in a disrespectful way.

I used to live here for three years. I moved out just as the change in management happened. I keep in touch with some old neighbors who still live in the Aldercrest Apartments and I have heard some really negative things about the management and their way of solving some recent issues.



When I lived here, Vicki Thomas was the manager. If you look at Aldercrest's page on apartmentratings.com, you would see that all the positive reviews mention Vicki Thomas and how amazing she was. This is not the case anymore.

I don't have anything substantially positive to say about this place. The on-site manager is awesome but the people who run the business are a nightmare. Let's start from the beginnning:



I moved here many years ago. The manager was amazing. There weren't many perks to living here (the area is unsafe and the apartments do not have any special ammeneties), but I was sold on the price and the human decency the management had. They treated tenants with respect. Recently, management has changed and this human decency has disappeared. They repainted the building so it looks nice, but internally, things are a mess.



Trash bins are constantly overflowing to the point where you can't take your trash out, people wedge the side doors to the apartment open, which lets anyone in (might I mention this palce is RIGHT near a halfway house and a youth detention center, and that there is a high crime rate), courtesy trash bins in the parking garages have been removed (now, people just throw their trash on the floor anyway), and there have even been a few cases where urine was in the elevator.



Rent was raised to crazy prices for the area with no perks like a free parking space or a signing bonus, which is usually pretty common to incentivize tenants to renew contracts. Every aspect of the business is run by a computer management tool, so if you have an uncommon request, management will simply tell you "it can't be done." They are either completely dumb or lack understanding that sometimes, you can't run an entire business through a computer program.You need this thing called human understanding.



That brings me to my most recent issue. Residents near me are constantly noisy and smoke cigarettes/weed in their apartment. I went through the hoops: asked them to stop personally (twice), called the apartment manager, had them issue a warning, then called the portfolio manager when it happened for the fourth or fifth time. When I expressed my concerns and frustration that the same issues keep arising, the portfolio manager was beyond disrespectful to me. She talked down to me and made it pretty clear that she wasn't willing to do anything to improve the situation beyond issuing another warning. These people hide behind their computer systems and "legal constraints," using them as excuses for why they won't help you. They don't try very hard to mask their feelings of indifference towards their "valued tenants."



I'm sad to be writing this review. This place used to be so great, but now I'm ashamed to call it "home." I know that by writing this review, management will be even less likely to work with me, but I'd rather be the sacrificial lamb than have anyone else think, for one second, that this would be a nice place to live.