Plantations at Haywood Apartment Homes

I remember the day I moved into this apartment. I was so excited. My family and I were new to Greenville, having relocated for my career I was eager to get everyone settled before school began. I choose Plantations at Haywood after the walk through. I truly believed that I’d found a decent place to live and raise my family. I was offered the option to wait for another apartment, but I was so pleased by what I was told about living here that I did not want to wait. That was 6 months ago. Now, I can’t help but wonder what the other place would have been like. So much has happened since then, I don’t even know where to start. June and July went well. I watched 2 or 3 other families move out of my building as I moved in and I didn’t understand their reluctance to share what living here was like. Now I know. One day I woke up to find a puddle of water in the kitchen by the dishwasher. It kept getting bigger and bigger. I opened the dishwasher door to find a pool of stagnant water collecting in the bottom of a dishwasher that had never been used since I moved in. I placed a work order with no response. So while someone from maintenance was here on another issue, I mentioned it and they fixed the problem. I have had 3 leaks, 4 if you count the broken dishwasher that I never use. I currently have an order in for a broken microwave. I completed the entry level walk-through form alone and not one of the items I listed as in need of attention has ever been addressed. We are still living with a broken doorbell, dirty exterior window screens, and broken window latches. The flaws with this unit are unbelievable. The floors are not level, the interior doors are not plumb or flush with the door frames, the doors themselves are separating from themselves and due to multiple layers of paint on them, it is peeling. When the doors are closed, you can see large gaps between the door and the door frame. There are no toilet paper holders or towel rods in either bathroom. And the bathroom facing the parking lot does not have one electrical outlet. No one can plug in an electric toothbrush or use a hair dryer or even use a plug-in air freshener which would have been helpful since the downstairs tenants smoked like a chimney. More on that later. The screens on the windows facing the back are full of cobwebs and leaves and twigs which prevents anyone from opening the windows for ventilation and fresh air. From the time of move-in, the unit has been infested with tiny flies like the ones that are drawn to moisture. Those flies get into the refrigerator, the ice bin in the freezer, and especially in the bathroom. The unit was so infested that if you left a cup with any liquid in it for a second, you came back to a bug floating in it. I’ve even found them inside the microwave! It makes food preparation unbearable as well. The unit has been damp since we moved in. The clothes in the closets are damp to the touch from the amount of moisture. We are now using Damp Rid bags inside the closets to collect the water. I’m sure that is contributing to the peeling paint and the doors separating from themselves. The two biggest issues were the leaks and the secondhand smoke. In August my downstairs neighbor, who has since left, had a leak that I was told was coming from my apartment. Noah from maintenance alerted me to this when he came to fix their issue and had to have access to my A/C unit closet. That closet, by the way has not been cleaned since forever. It is full of spider webs, dust, and dirt. The second incident with the water issue came from the apartment above me around the time the tenant moved out. I came home to find my living room floor wet with water still leaking from the upstairs unit. I had to make several emergency calls to maintenance before anyone showed up. I was told that the workers upstairs did not shut off the water. That situation caused some water damage to the ceiling, enough to leave brown stains and bald spots. This time, Steve I think was his name had to cut holes in the entry closet wall to get at the A/C unit to make the necessary repairs that Noah did the first time. He repaired the closet walls and patched and painted the ceiling without ever looking for standing water trapped between the floors or treating or pretreating the space for mold. Both tenants upstairs had moved out by now. I remember seeing workers replacing flooring and other things, I’m sure. I also noticed at this time roaches in my unit. No roaches had been seen for 3 months. When I alerted the office of this, I was told that roaches are attracted to water. That statement just validated my concern about the dampness already evident in the unit. And now that water has been soaked into the floor joists above from this recent water leak, I feared roach infestation along with the nuisance little flies. I requested an appointment for the exterminator, asking if treatment could be made to both units upstairs as well. No one ever showed up. The biggest and the latest water issue came on Labor Day weekend. I heard water running as if the washing machine was on and it wasn’t. When I went to investigate, there was water gushing out of a hole in the ceiling on the left hand side of the A/C closet, full force. Then I heard water dripping as if it was raining inside. The areas affected were the exact same areas that had just been patched up. I had to get several buckets, pots whatever to catch all the dripping water. It was a mess that evening. Due to the inundation of water in the same spots, this time the ceiling began to bubble up and the plaster fell to the floor. It took several emergency calls to get someone out. I was told this time that the A/C unit was sweating and questioned repeatedly about the settings on the thermostat. The maintenance guy was able to stick his finger through the drywall where the water was leaking consistently, and that area was nowhere near the A/C unit. Not once did maintenance check the upstairs unit since the water was coming from above. The upstairs tenant was not home during this ordeal. To this day, I don’t know the source or the cause of the leak. Eventually a contractor came out to access the damage. He cut out one of the 3 visibly damaged areas in the ceiling. Due to the heaviness of the water, that area of the ceiling was bowing and had the most visible damage, however at least 2 other areas were compromised. One of those smaller areas still had the finger holes left by the previous maintenance guy. It would seem reasonable that that section of drywall would need to be replaced or at least looked at. It was patched up yet again. Finally, I was told when I signed the lease, this is a nonsmoking community, inside each unit and within 25 feet of the building. Many a morning, as I went to work or took my daughter to school, we walked through the secondhand smoke of the tenants below my unit as they sat on the steps outside my front door smoking and/or talking on the phone. Several of them living there or visiting there would come and go throughout the day and night. Secondhand smoke has been determined to be more detrimental than smoking itself. My unit smelled of smoke. The bathrooms smelled of smoke! My bedroom smelled as if I’d been smoking, and I don’t smoke!! Those tenants including 2 dogs, have since moved out around the end of October. It is now nearing the end of November and the heap of trash and furniture they left under the steps weeks ago and at the entry landing is still there. It is unclear whether they are coming back or if other people are coming by in the middle of the night picking through things because items are beginning to disappear. My concern for that is that the door looks as if it has been broken into and the exterior light remains out which allows anyone to be down there and not be seen. When I brought this to your attention, you were not even aware of the conditions. You probably don’t know that the screen at the window facing the parking lot appears to have been cut and the items continue to slowly disappear. The police were there on two occasions before they moved out. I’m not asking for details but on top of everything else I have described, now I am concerned for the safety of my family. At times I can still smell the smoke in my unit. No one has cleaned that unit under me in weeks. Now my unit smells of marijuana which is another concern for another day. My point is that this section is only visited when valet collects the trash and the leaves are blown by lawncare. I knew this was an older building when I moved in. What was not revealed was that this also is a neglected building. Then there is the work order for my microwave that happened right at the time of the last water leak issue while waiting for the ceiling to be repaired. I’m still waiting to hear something regarding that work order which was placed weeks ago. While it may not be a priority for you, it is for me and the quality of living for me and my family. These conditions are impacting my mental and emotional health, and I won’t know the impact of the exposure to secondhand smoke for quite some time. I live in constant fear expecting to have another leak and pray that nothing else goes wrong because nothing ever gets fixed in a timely manner or taken seriously here. When I reported the cigarette smoke, I was told to ask them not to smoke as if I had some authority to do that. At the time of this plea and request, it has been at least 3 weeks and the trash still remains outside unit#62 with people picking through it, the exterior light is still out on that level, full grown roaches continue to show up in my unit, I am still waiting for workorders to be addressed, and another tenant has been moved out leaving 2 of the 6 units occupied in this building. I am asking that you move me to a new and improved unit without any of these issues or release me from my lease without any financial penalties due to your inability to provide customary diligence. Please, it is the least that you can do since you have not afforded me an enjoyable place to reside. I just want a decent place to live to raise my child. The Plantations at Haywood has proven not to be that place.

This apartment suck over priced for the quality it gives. When I moved in everything was wrong with this apartment it was not ready for a even an animal family to move into this place. We told them about all the issues we had when we first moved in and they caught and attitude with me saying we have several other apartment that need work and basically yall need to wait your turn. We could of waited our turn somewhere else instead of moving us into an unready apartment wasn't even here a whole 12 hrs and stuff was falling apart. It's just old and ran down and definitely needs some work. I will be leaving as soon as my lease is up I would not recommend this place.