252 River St Michigan State University   

Overall, Zexii rated this rental a 0.8
on Thursday, December 06, 2007 at 11:51 AM

May 2005 - May 2007

My roommate and I refer to this apartment complex that we resided in as "the cave". Now, this statement doesn't come lightly and is totally justified. The main reason we moved into this complex was the amazing location and the opportunity for both of us to have our own space and bedrooms. After the second bug infestation(ants, giant ants and kitchen bugs) and the heating being broken once a month, we were a bit skeptical. But oh, it didn't stop there. Every weekend one of the neighbors would puke in the hallway or tear out part of the wall, leaving the insulation hanging out like the remains of a violent massacre. Of course, the rental office is closed on weekends, thus if you are the luckiest of tenants to get this pile of barf outside your door you get to smell and jump over it every weekend. Your own personal obstical course! One evening I recall sitting in my living room drinking a nice glass of wine with my roommate when we hear a large thump and then a strange, disheveled man is knocking on our porch door. Mind you, we are the second story apartment. This wonderful specimen had jumped down from above and wanted to walk through our apartment to get out. Another weekend episode happened when I went to take a shower. I see water dripping from above. What could it be? So my roommate and I go upstairs to investigate and find the leak. Perhaps someone left a sink to overflow. Oh no. The upstairs apartment had been having their toilet overflow for a week and the maintenance still hadn't been there to fix it. We had a raw sewage waterfall for the entire weekend. Another such exciting feature is that the maintenance or the rental personnel can enter your apartment at any time for any reason. Did I mention they don't have uniforms? My roommate and I would frequently have strange men unlock our door and enter saying they were there to fix something or check on the heat. This was beyond unreasonable and borderline dangerous. One morning after just moving into the apartment I hear a pounding on my door. It is my roommate in a panic! The rental office was repaving the parking lot and after having just thrown up notifications 4 hours previous (at 6am that day) they were towing and ticketing all of the cars in the lot. What a wonderful office to give us such advance warning. (Pause to vent). One of my favorite features of this building was the stairwell to get into it. Short, steep and slick they were made of rickety wood with nails sticking out sporadically and a handrail that was not stable. Over the two years living here I saw numerous falls, I myself took two nice ones. One of which was bad enough that I had my roommate take photographic evidence of my butt and the terrible state of multicolored green and yellow it was. Awesome! I have one final story to tell before I conclude. When first moving into the apartment I had to get in when the dorms closed or I would be out of housing. The apartment complex agreed to this if I paid $200 and did all of the cleaning myself. So I paid it and did the disgusting cleaning. Then, two years later I hand in my original judgment papers on the condition when I moved in and my keys. Not surprisingly they take all of the security deposit for things that were there before I arrived. As well as $30 for a new doorknob we had installed because the previous one was broken and the rental office would not replace it. After all this time though, we knew not to try to fight it anymore because it was an uphill battle to nothing.

In conclusion, the only good thing about this place was the location. Even that is not a top rater because of the drunken idiots and breaking bottles you hear every night for the total length you live here. I have endless nightmares and stories of this place. I do not recommend it under any conditions at all. BEWARE THE RIVER ROC APARTMENTS!