Management Needs Improvement
Pros
The love the apartment itself. It's a good size and the location of the building is great for me (close to the park, work, public transport, supermarkets, etc). There's also great natural light in the unit and it's pet friendly. I think I only had to pay $25 for my pets once when I submitted my rental application. Management is pretty responsive to most things EXCEPT for when it comes to maintenance issues.
Cons
The pros outweigh the cons for me, personally, but the management is far from ideal: 1 - The building (not the apartment) are not the cleanest and there is a smell in the stairwell. I've been told that it was dead mice in the walls. The smell isn't as bad now, though it seems they didn't get rid of the problem but put out air freshener/purifier. I have also seen tenants smoking in the stairwell, which doesn't help. 2 - There have been many problems with the boiler, especially during the summer. Two summers in a row now for the most part the hot water was really lacking. There would be temporary fixes, but nothing more lasting until tenants starting reporting it to HPD and violations started to be issued. And even then, sometimes fixes took longer than they should have. This was a serious issue that made me consider not renewing my lease. But again, the pros outweigh the cons for me. 3 - The garbage situation isn't the best. It gets taken out and sorted most days Monday-Friday, but on the weekends it really piles up. Like with some tenants leaving things in the stairwell/hallway, some of them also don't put their garbage actually into the container, rather they leave it on the sidewalk. There used to be a lot of rats in the garbage as well, but in the last year or so I haven't encountered many, so that's good. 4 - I don't personally have pests in my apartment, but I've seen multiple HPD violations on other units for them. I don't know if it's because I'm on the 5th floor, keep my apartment as clean as possible, or the fact that I have 2 cats, though that con is noteworthy. 5 - The front door has been broken multiple times and it's usually days/weeks before it gets fixed. This is a MAJOR security issue... There are also some smaller maintenance issues that don't get attention as quickly as they should. I don't know if all these issues are due to management or the landlord, or both. I will say that there have been notices from ConEd posted at least twice about missed bill payments as well as a court summons for the owner recently posted on the front door of the building due to violations.