I moved into a duplex on East Michigan Ave, which was rented to my boyfriend and I from the East…read moreMichigan Ave LLC/Gillepsie Group/Prudden Place Management.
We were approved right away, and excited about our move to Lansing.
Immediately we were told by the current downstairs neighbors there was an ongoing rodent problem. The neighbors essentially told us they had been listening to mice in the walls of the house since April when they moved in, and the company was actually having to pay to move the tenants elsewhere as a result. We began hearing the same noises right away, and my cat caught a mouse- but we were reassured time and time again the issue was being handled.
That said, the downstairs neighbors insisted the house itself had been deemed unable to cohabit ate by one exterminator and encouraged us to keep our eyes and ears open.
After the downstairs neighbors moved out, we began hearing individuals come into the apartment in the evenings. I complained about this, not understanding how this was happening, and the most which was done was that the manager- Sarah Frese- wrote a note to the squatters that the police would be informed.
In fact, my boyfriend and I didn't understand how anyone was getting into the apartment, and so we went and checked the doors only to discover that weeks after our downstairs neighbors had been moved out, not only were the locks NOT changed on the main entry way doors, they were not changed on the downstairs apartment doors either. We locked the bottom locks of the downstairs apartment- and voila- no more squatters.
We also found the mice issue was not immediately resolved, and not only that- we had a squirrel issue.
Around October, after the squirrel issue was handled (and only discovered after coming home to a squirrel in front of my upstairs door way INSIDE) we got NEW neighbors.
The new neighbors moved in with their trash bags in the middle of the evening. From the first evening the new neighbors were there, they began to cause havoc. The neighbors threw our laundry in the dryer on top of the dryer and onto the floor to make room for their own. They began immediately partying most nights of the week, blaring their music so loudly that our two children were waking up in our UPSTAIRS apartment over the sound of their fans.
Pot smoke wreaked from stepping into the main entry ways, and the soon we were making phone calls to the non-emergency line four times a week, while simultaneously EMAILING Sarah each time.
After we began contacting the police due to the noise complaints, the neighbors began harassing us, screaming through the ceiling. Twice the lease holder verbally threatened me, both times in front of my five year old. At one point the neighbor saw my ten year old daughter in the window, and began threatening her as well. I requested the name of the girl on the lease to attempt to get a PPO for my children and myself, and Sarah refused that info stating confidentiality.
In the last days of our stay in the apartment, the police complained to us about how often the noise complaints were happening. The police told us the management company should be resolving these issues, and I informed the police I had been emailing for three months, and my manager had told me there was almost nothing she could do, and to continually call the police if we had issues. I told the cops I agreed that they have better things to do, and actually gave the management companies number per their request because they found it so shocking that a manager at a management company would rather have tenants getting visited by cops then simply taking care of the issue themselves.
The morning after our next and last noise complaint, the downstairs neighbor- Lauren Velez- poured bleach into a load of our laundry, destroying everything in our laundry- including my sons bedding, and a good handful of our clothing. I have had to file a police report for vandalism, and Sarah has once again said there is nothing she can do
It is now January and we have moved out of the apartment. The neighbor Last week- the 27th- our neighbors received their FIRST lease violation for NOISE. This is DESPITE three months of emails about the noise, pot smoke, cigarette smoke, verbal threats of physical harassment, and vandalism of our things.
This company is a trumped up version of an old slum lord. Not only would i NOT recommend this company, but i would LOVE for the management company as a whole to be entirely cleared out if not taught some normal, functioning practices. Gillepsie Group seems okay in taking advantage of poor people.