If you're a student and think you're desperate to find an apartment, just know you're never desperate enough to work with these people! Just go to the dorms, at least you'll have decent electricity...
... I'll explain. After searching for an entire summer for an apartment and dealing with very shady people, I got a tip from a friend to try Lifestyle. I had two weeks to move out of the dorm, and was on the verge of not having a place to live. When I explained I was looking for an apartment, the guy on the phone tried to shove a way too expensive apartment in my face. It took several minutes to get him to understand I was working on a budget. Finally, we got to an understanding and I went the next morning to see a place. It was very small and near a bad neighborhood. I knew that going in, but I figured everything would at least work in the place, or else the landlord wouldn't be able to do business with the agency, right? Wrong! A city is only as "bad" as the people who help run it, and our landlord was the shits.
They asked up front for first, last, and security. That's not allowed in Rhode Island, but they gave me some bs and a bunch of legal terms I couldn't quite get (hey, I hadn't even finished school yet), and I paid them. My mistake. I moved in during the summer, and...
As soon as the weather got cold, the heater busted. The people upstairs from my boyfriend and I never had heat, and they slept in their coats. Our heater worked for a while, and once it broke, the landlord gave an excuse about it being too cold to work on the pipes. The refridgerator's freezer stopped working and we couldn't get it replaced. The oven was older than my mother and should not have been in use (something else I didn't know until later) and we had mice. Also, the lights in the bathroom cut out permanently for the last 2 months of our living there. We were ready to go, but because of our age and the fact that we were students, nobody would really look at us seriously for taking an apartment. Also, it's such a coincidence that the only people ever to live in these apartments were college kids who couldn't go anywhere else!
That landlord was a slumlord, and I know the Lifestyle staff knew. They must have, because they work with more than one. My friend (call him Brian, since he's not here with me as I write this) rented a place with three friends. We both went through the same agent, and both paid way too much for what we were getting. Yes, they're also college students. Another college aged girl I met in one of my many trips to their office reported that the apartment they took money from her for as a security deposit was already being rented, and they never bothered to notify her. She had to bring her stuff there ready to move in to be told—by the occupants! The people of Lifestyle are shady, and know they can milk you for cash simply because you're not from Rhode Island and don't know the specifics of how things work—especially if you're just leaving the dorms, as my friends and I were. I am in the process now of notifying authorities about my old landlord. This should be fun.
Do youselves a favor, and just get a dorm assignment until you find the right place—never settle for scammers like them! You've been warned...
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