Upon finding out that University Village, a modular home neighborhood near the universityI was enrolled in, offered 6 month leases, my roommate and myself quickly went to sign a lease. We were told there were no two bedroom units left so we would be placed in a three bedroom unit but not to worry. They told us to fill out paperwork as protocall about what type of additional roomate we would prefer, and assured us that it would be very unlikely anyone would want to move in with us, but if that were to happen we would have final say as to whether someone were to move in with us.
This past Summer we were contacted by a young lady we didn't know and informed by her that she would be our new roomate. When we called University Village they claimed to us that we had been informed and there was nothing we could do about it.
When we eventually moved into our unit a girl from Pakistan showed up a week late in the university term. She arrived at midnight and opened the front door along with my roomates locked door, unexpectedly. We were quite upset about this, and were concerned because this new tenant told us she had yet to pay for any security deposit or monthly rent. This alarmed us as she had access to our property and if she were to damage or steal any goods we would be held reponsible because we were on the lease, not the stranger.
The girl confided she would not be able to live in University Village because she did not have the money, yet the property manager still allowed her a key. Later they told us another girl from Pakistan would be moving into our unit and we would have a roomate whether we like it or not. This new Pakistani girl would be there throughout the day with her Mother and Brother, using the home as their family home.
We informed them that we knew of other vacant units in the development and they denied this until we told them of stories we had heard from other neighbors.including one girl with 2 dogs living in a 4 bedroom unit undisturbed by the property management.
The Property Manager, who was truly deceptful and verbally abusive on the phone would tell me one thing, and once I relayed it back to my roomate, she would tell her I had lied and that she should not trust me. (My roomate and I have been friends for over 4 years previously, so we knew this woman was trying to start some interconflict amongst us, though we don't know why)
Throughout these messy problems, the property manager would walk in and out of our place unannounced leaving papers for us to leave, but this was in the lease so we understood that though not customary we would have to deal with this.
That is until we were robbed. My roomate left for her job very early one morning and when I woke up, like every morning I locked and dead bolted our doors. When I returned from class I noticed our scale had been moved but thought nothing of it, as I can be absent minded. When my roomate returned for the day she was alarmed and shaken. A handful of her underwear had been taken, her perfume was gone, pictures of her and her boyfriend had been removed, her deoderant was taken, and possibly worst of all her diary which had been compiled for years and held secrets she had never told anyone was also missing. The only other people who had a key to our place were the property manager and her husband who performed the mainetnance on the property.
We immediatly contacted the police who didn't seem to take our case too seriously. They kept insisting we must have had a party and things had gone missing then. We never had a party, and we never had people over we did not know incredibly well.
When the Property Manager was approached by the police she did not appear concerned for our safety, yet instead began to accuse us of being difficult and making up falacies about my personal character and lies about conversations she had had with my father, which was written in the police report.
My Father's Best Friend is very respected and high up in the Chicago Police Force, so when this news came to him he was immediatley alarmed for my safety. He explained to us that for someone to take items that personal from our residence they were a perpetrator, and that perpetrators usually return. He went on to tell me this could be someone who would be sexually violent and that I needed to move out of this unsafe situation as quickly as possible.
That night my Mother came down to my school and moved me out and into a safer residence. Both my roomate and I discontinued paying our rent to University Village because we were not provided with a safe living situation which is a tenants basic right. We had reached out to Taurus, the larger company who owns University Village and were helped to no avail. Since then we have recieved credit notices in the mail and phone calls telling us that we will be put into collection if we do not pay for the time we did not live in that unsafe anxiety inducing place.
For any property manager to not be alarmed after such a break in and to instead begin to cover her own end is alarming enough. To have this very same woman not offer to do anything to aid in our protection like a change of locks or additional security measures is suspiscious as well. The fact that this woman had the key to our place makes us wonder if she was the one who entered and stole from us. On top of this all I feel emotionally violated that this woman and this company would ask us to pay money for rent and threaten us with collection agencies after all we had been through due to their corrupt way of handeling business.
On a final note, MANY MANY other residents in the neighborhood have horror stories about deceit, stealing money, and selfish acts towards tenants that have simply not come to the public light.
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