I lived here for two years. I'll just tell you my experience and let you decide.
Pros - Rent is cheap. Unlike other communities, management is reasonable and they listen to you , bother you less with silly things. Post lease treatment was good too. Parking is not a problem and things go smoothly if you are willing to compromise on a few things as below :
Houses are old and weak. By weak, I mean that the walls which are supposed to provide you shelter from wind, rain and sunlight shake with fear when you or anyone else moves in the building. If you stay downstairs, after a few days, you can easily make out who got up upstairs and in which direction they are walking.
Soon you would get trained and you will tune yourself to get up with them or even before them waiting for them to get up. Sometimes late in the night you would wonder what the time is since nobody got up upstairs. Or simply you would know that is 4:30 in the morning. You'll know when they are on vacation and when they are back. Your sense of Footstep Recognition will heighten like anything !! The walls are literally paper thin.
Showers and vent fans in the bathroom are as loud as night clubs, especially the vent fan. You can hear your neighbors use the bathroom in your sleep. A single switch controls both the light and vent fan in the bathroom. In my house this switch had a faulty wiring. Often when I switched off the lights and came to my room, randomly after a few seconds/minutes or hours the light and loud vent fan would switch on all by themselves. If I had slept, it was time to wake up with a stroke.
Girls and boys in their mid 20s, high, going wild in their balcony or even streets and dancing on a super loud mono Cassette players is a common sight after 6:00 PM.
When people here make noises, they don't give a f*** ! Everything that has been done to stop them in the past has failed miserably. They simply dare you to test them and their confidence makes you accept that nothing can be done even if it is your first day in your brand new house !
Below my house there was some sort of an open passage which went from next to my balcony to almost the middle of my room. I have absolutely no clue as to what it was. My bad luck was that the passage ended right underneath my bed.
In case I found some peace in life, my neighbors cat ( 2 of them) would silently get in there and patiently wait for the right moment until I'm in deep asleep. When the time is right, both of them would suddenly shout in a heavy manly voice as loud as possible.
I'm way past the age when people play pranks on one another. Imagine a sound coming from an impossible place like underneath you bed ? Imagine living alone and hearing sounds like these ? Imagine having to suddenly wake up in sheer panic, unable to breathe or think and having to ask yourself questions like :- Is this house on a grave ? Trust me, even the ghosts have broken their lease and left this place.
Soon, I got used to it as I found a solution to fix everything...I never slept.
The community is sub-standard with awesome people. Smoking in the balcony is a part of your lease agreement. Almost every body smokes here (not that its good or bad..just an observation) and smoking the real stuff is a socially accepted culture... Once on Friday night around 10-15 cop cars came and I saw 2-3 people running away from the backside of the complex minutes before the cops arrival. I was no longer shocked to see these things, I was just curious to know more about these superior race of humans. How come they knew about the cops ? And how come, their timing was inch-perfect...?
These are once in lifetime things and I'm glad I witnessed them..
I was also privileged to witness some live physical fights and violence in front of me.
Oh, and one more thing.. you might sometimes find yourself locked out in the cold. The door auto locks itself so remember to carry the keys even if you are taking the TRASH out.. This has happened to me few times and I had to call the maintenance. I hope you can see why these things should not be a concern for anyone living here.
I'm giving it two stars because the onsite management was surprisingly good and so was the rent. If anything went wrong, it was fixed. There are only a few things the management can do. What sells here is the price and I guess it works for everyone who lives here.
So... you decide ! read more