Review of Brenda Stewart – Columbia Heights, 40502 ★ "Brenda Stewart is a disgusting leech. She kept the entire security deposit without justification. Never provided an itemized list. We cleaned for several days before moving out and left the apartment in better shape than when we moved in. She lives in a huge suburban mcmansion and makes… Continue reading Review of by Brenda Stewart nousernamepls
Review of Jim Arnold – Idle Hour, 40502 ★★ "He was understanding in many situations, but the gutter/siding above the door outside broke off and it was months before it was fixed. The building didn’t have fire alarms. He requires written notice WELL in advance before your lease ends if you want to move but doesn’t point… Continue reading Review of Jim Arnold by OCH
"Robert Powell never came to the house and barely communicated with the property manager. The most egregious problem though was a complete lack of a heater in the house, like there was no heat installed at all, just AC. In the depths of winter 2016, the property manager brought over one large heater. The property manager was a good guy who was trying his best to maintain over 30 properties if memory serves. Do not rent from Robert Powell."
"Obvious slumlord. One of the bedrooms was a converted closet, the house barely kept any heat in the winter, and Trump supporting property managers would enter the home unannounced without giving 24 hour notice on several occasions to berate tenants. Wanted us to re-sign the lease less than 6 months in and when we decided not to they began showing the house nearly every day for months, having strangers in our home quite frequently. No privacy, no respect, and obvious money-grabbers. Don’t recommend, also the property owner lives out of state so that’s an extra layer of bs."
"Robert Powell is scum and an exploitative landlord/lawyer who preys on tenants. When I moved in the previous tenants were still moving out despite being told to be out by a certain time, this meant that Robert did not do a walkthrough between tenants, despite there being extensive damage to carpets and walls which would later be blamed on me. The main issues were that we went without heat between November and January…yes, we literally did not have heat and Robert stalled on trying to get us a replacement heater for months without offering to reduce rent or provide any recourse. Then, on top of that, in the summer our AC went out and Robert spent a week trying to weasel his way out of fixing it when the median average temperature was above 95 degrees. The final point is that he took our entire deposit for bullshit reasons including taking out money for completing maintenance on the house. He then proceeded to take our deposit money and spruce up the house for the next tenants. 0/10 wouldn’t recommend, stay away from this exploitative cockroach."
"This man, my former landlord, current UK History professor, should be held accountable for his actions of being an extremely exploitative, money-hungry, racist, and sexist landlord. Please avoid 428 E Maxwell Street and any of his properties. His lease may be tempting. He does not require a co-signer, previous rental or landlord references, employment info, and does not do credit/background checks. Allows pets. This was good for me as a student moving into their first housing, however, in hindsight, I should have seen these as red flags. Before delving into house issues, let me speak on the character of this wretched man. He is explicitly racist in saying when we first met that women from my (Muslim, Middle Eastern) country are oppressed by the tradition of wearing headscarves. He talked at me for hours, a Middle Eastern woman, lecturing me on what was good in the history of my country and people of my gender. Previous female tenants have also complained about him coming into their units without warning or notice, and one has even complained of personal items (intimate personal items…) being moved around and misplaced. He also treats his female tenants differently, and female of color tenants differently, often very dismissive and treating us like we do not know anything and are dumb. We are not, I was not, taken seriously about anything. Now, the house. I lived on 428 E Maxwell Street. It is the decrepit red house across from Michlers nursery and Kentucky Native Cafe. Upon moving in, I was confronted with a disgusting apartment that smelled so intensely of animals (and their shit) due to the previous tenants who owned 10+ pets including many cats and many dogs. It is honestly too traumatic to go into details of having to figure out what to do. The place was inhospitable. Shortly after, I discovered there were squirrels living in the walls. This was a months+ ordeal to get rid of them. During this process, the animal control person discovered there was more shit literally inside the walls. I also could smell dog shit in other parts of the unit (likely lodged in between another set of walls). The house has been on the brink of condemnation before, and has been called on MANY code violations in its years. Fake AC vents are screwed into the walls. I'm sure the fire alarm does not work. There was a problem of rats. Why does animal control recognize this house? I suffered from mysterious spider bites. Undoubtedly there was mold growing, and likely a host of other toxins leeching. The windows had no screens. Many windows would not open or close properly. The door is on its last legs of life. The house door has been kicked in many times. Burglaries have occurred many times in this house, once during my living there but in a different unit. When the summer began I discovered that the AC did not work. That never got fixed despite my desperate pleas to have my basic human right of livable temperatures be met. I lived in the attic. We are talking 85-90 degrees inside with a broken AC shooing in hot air. There were only 2 tiny vents for 1000+ sqft. He made me go and buy a fan. That was the solution. There were many holes in the floorboards. Big enough for a child to fall through. Holes in the walls revealing the outdoors. The walls had many holes in them, likely from former domestic violence incidents. The floors paint were half scratched off. The bathroom sink was missing a leg and the sink never drained. The bathroom ceiling could not fit a tall person in it. The shower was also on its last legs of life. The entire house is on its last legs of life. I wish nothing but for the house to burn down and for this man to lose every cent of wealth he's extracted from tenants. David Olster is a filthy scumbag. It is a shame he is employed by the University of Kentucky. I am likely forgetting many things. Oh, when I moved out, he threw my deposit check at me. A deposit check I had to beg for and threaten lawyers on my side in order to get it back. Once he realized it would be more expensive to take me to court than to just give me my deposit back, he gave it back. He has no moral compass. His desire to exploit and flip a profit, even if it is $10, is greater than his understanding of human beings' human rights, basic needs, and survival. He told me on many occasions that it would be better if I moved out of the unit far before my lease was set to be over. He has made me cry and get angry with anxiety on multiple occasions due to his dismissal of my requests for ^ these things to be changed and fixed. This housing and his behavior dramatically worsened my mental health. He has also expressed to me that he is very wealthy. Last thoughts: when I moved in, the oven did not work and the knobs were broken. The sink faucet was completely detached from the sink plumbing. The refrigerator had broken shelving. A move-in cleaning company had to be hired to clean out the place and after I moved in, I spent hours and $$$ cleaning the place myself to make it livable. The moving company was disgusted and could hardly breathe when they came in. I just wanted it to be livable. Just livable. We are talking a very meager and simple "livable" standard here. He never did a walk-in when we moved in despite for one when I asked. I don't think he's spent any time in the unit. When I got my deposit back at the end, however, we did do a walk-through, and he seemed disgusted by the state it was in, despite me adding property value to it by re-painting the walls, thoroughly cleaning as much as I could humanly stand when I moved in, and leaving lights and a fan for the next tenant. This was nothing short of a slum house. I do not forgive myself for moving here. I would rather be in debt than to degrade myself to such dehumanizing living conditions and dehumanizing power exploitative controlling landlord again. AVOID!"
"I lived in the attic apartment at 411 East Maxwell from August 2015 to July 2016 while I finished up my last year of grad school at UK. It was disgusting when I moved in. I had to do a ton of cleaning because the landlord leaves it up to the previous tenant to clean. I heard squirrels constantly running around in the walls and under the floor. The heat never worked, instead of an actual heating system there was an insert- but it wasn’t inserted in the wall, it just sat out. Anyway it didn’t work so they brought me a space heater. The apartment was pretty large for a one bedroom so that one space heater was not enough, I had to buy a couple more and hope that I didn’t short out the electricity all winter long. At the time I was living there, Phil used a property manager (Tamara, I think? Can’t remember her name). She was a nice person but all the maintenance stuff was so sloppy. At one point my living room window broke, due to the ancient wood framing around it. I had to live with a piece of cardboard in the window for a couple weeks while she figured it out. There were 2 particularly awful incidents while I lived there that make this place the official worst place I have ever lived (and this is from someone who has moved around a lot and been renting for 20 years). The first was the bathroom plumbing. The neighbor downstairs kept calling her to say that they had water leaking from their ceiling (so below my apartment). But I was really careful not to get water on the floor. They kept accusing me of splashing water out of the tub when taking a bath- but it was OBVIOUSLY something with the pipes inside the building- I would surround the tub with towels and be super careful- but then they would still text me to say the neighbors had water coming in. It got worse the longer I lived there. I stopped taking baths because that seemed to be when the issues happened- but then by the last couple months I was there it was happening even when I took very quick showers. At one point the manager came with a plumber- he was messing with the toilet and didn’t see anything. They kept accusing me of just being messy when I definitely was not. I felt really bad for my downstairs neighbors but I had to be able to shower. The bathroom floor was super spongy and discolored from previous water damage. Near the end of the time I lived there the people in the first floor apartment had some major water leaking in (from my place or the 2nd floor- I don’t know) and it ruined a bunch of their stuff. The second awful thing was when I was moving out. I was moving out of state so had arranged with the manager to do my walk through the day before I would be leaving since I would head out at like 6:00 am the next day. All my stuff had been shipped out already, I was just living in the bedroom on an air mattress with my cats for the last couple days. She showed up for the final walk through and I said something about how the stuff in the bedroom would be gone when I left in the morning. She said, “well the new tenants are on their way over, they’ll be here in 15 minutes”. I was SO PISSED. I had specifically set it up with her (via text, I still had the texts on my phone and showed her) so that we’d do the walk through the afternoon before I had to leave town. But then there was nothing I could do about it. The new tenant showed up with her truck and a bunch of people to help her move in. I just stayed in the bedroom and waited for them to finish, then I spent a strange night surrounded by this other person’s stuff. Also- I never received any pro rated rent or anything for that, even though I was leaving the day before my lease was up so the apartment was still legally mine. Do not rent from PVH Real Estate. It was a year of things being a total shit show and I could not wait to get out of there."
"Micah frequently sent maintenance out without responding to my texts. I would think I was being ignored, only to be woken up by the maintenance guy. A little heads up would have gone a long way. On one occasion, maintenance entered while I wasn't home and I had not been told they were coming that day. I left the apartment in better shape than I got it in, but I was not given any of my deposit back. Micah stopped responding to me. I never got an itemized explanation nor any kind of explanation. Thanks for preying on poor students!"
"Horrible. They lie. They retaliate and do vicious things to get back at you. They have not done 1 thing I have requested multiple times to fix. The air conditioner and furnace are ancient and never been serviced."
"Please, for the love of all things good, DO NOT rent from Melvin Cosby on park avenue. One month in and he was coming by my work daily, checking in on me every evening in the creepiest fashion, and verbally harassed me. The harassment continued until I broke the lease 3 months in after the police advised me to (I have two police reports saying the landlord was mentally unstable at the time of the response). He talked terribly about past tenants and I should have known he was the problem! I originally paid him $900 for rent and deposit, which he would use the deposit for our gas bill. Something I suggested because he made many remarks about how he was broke and was unsure how we would have heat in the winter, if the bill wasn't paid when I moved in. He had acquired a bit of debt on that bill. He constantly held over my head was how he paid the utilities. I paid $500 for rent, but gave him at least $100 extra every month because he made me feel so responsible for his unemployment and financial status after I couldn't get him a job at my work. Very thankful my hiring manager got a weird vibe from him or he would have been around me basically all the time. I had to get away from this person after I set up cameras and caught him going into my unit while I was at work to make sure I turned my AC, heat, lights, faucets?(I know, he was insane!) and unplugged stuff on numerous occasions. Never got a 24 or even 1 hour notice on when he was coming in. Had to have a friend move in the last week, so he couldn't come inside while I was gone. With that being said, if he doesn't get you with the constant trying to get more money out of you for electric and how it is your fault, the constant thought of him being in your home will."
The Lexington Tenant Review 