NONSMOKERS BEWARE! If you are a nonsmoker, this is not the place for you. This complex is crawling with smokers, and they are allowed to smoke inside their units. The insulation between units is not good, and secondhand smoke will travel through the walls, piping, and duct work, and into your unit. The chances are very high here that you will end up sharing at least one wall with a smoker, and if that happens, you will consistently smell strong cigarette smoke in your kitchen, laundry room, bathroom, living room, and yes, sometimes even in your bedroom when you are lying in your bed at night. The smoke will get trapped inside your kitchen cabinets and drawers, even when your neighbors aren't lighting up at the moment. So even if you don't smell smoke as soon as you walk into your apartment, once you start opening cabinets and drawers in the kitchen to make something to eat, you will be hit with blasts of noxious smoke fumes that were sitting inside from the last time your neighbors lit up.
Even if you try to enact measures on your own to stop the smoke from entering your unit, they will not work. Insulated electrical outlet covers and plugs do not work. Baking soda and air fresheners do not work. $300 air purifiers do not work. Fans do not work. Even opening windows and doors does not work, especially if it's hot and humid outside because the smoke will stick to the warm air and sit there, even with fans blowing. Even if it's cold outside, the cold air may temporarily carry away most of the smoke, but then you're freezing. Plus, as soon as you close everything up, you'll only smell it again, especially if you turn the heat back on! Having the heat on in the winter only makes the smell worse and helps to spread the smoke farther into your apartment. You will get tired of doing this dance, especially at 11:00 at night when you're trying to get the smoke out of your bedroom so you can sleep and get up for work in the morning! Even when you try to clear out the smoke by opening the doors and windows, whether it's hot or cold outside, there will likely be several occasions when your neighbor next-door will be outside on the shared patio smoking at the same moment, so then you will not only have smoke coming through the walls from the neighbor behind you, but also smoke coming in from outside from the neighbor next-door!! When this happens, there is nowhere else to ventilate, and then you're REALLY stuck in hell.
And finally, complaining to management does not work. Since this is not specifically designated as a smoke-free property, management does not feel that they can force residents to only smoke outside, even though it will end up costing them hundreds and even thousands of dollars to clean and repair damaged units that were once occupied by smokers. The yellowed and brown-stained blinds of units occupied by smokers only hint at the extensive damage that is likely to be found inside, but management does not seem to care.
Even though it is stated in the lease that you have the right to the quiet enjoyment of your unit (ie. You should be able to live there peacefully without being constantly bothered by any rude and obnoxious behavior from other residents), this apparently does not apply to being consistently blasted with secondhand smoke from a neighboring unit. If it was a noise issue, you might have a leg to stand on, but secondhand cigarette smoke, which is toxic and dangerous to your health, NO - management will tell you that you either have to deal with it, or pay a HUGE penalty to break the lease and move out. And yes, even if you are forced to break the lease early to escape the smoke that management refuses to do anything about, and you are basically constructively evicted and chased out of your own unit due to unlivable conditions that you had nothing to do with creating, you will STILL be expected to pay all penalties associated with breaking the lease.
Nonsmokers, PLEASE do not make the mistake of renting an apartment at this complex. You will find no friend here. You may have to go a little farther outside of Cleveland to find a smoke-free complex, but trust me, it will be worth it, and it will save you a ton of money and aggravation in the end. read more