Fox Chase Apts./Aimco Elder Harassment and Blatantly inaccurate charges to excuse non refund of security deposit. Alexandria Virginia

My mother, who is now 96 and living in a nursing home with dementia, lived in Fox Chase Apts. for 29 years. It was a HUD subsidized apt. Not once during those years did they paint or replace carpet. They did the bare minimum, such as replacing equipment that stopped working. Over the years I had to deal with the property mgmt. office on behalf of my mother, and was threatened with law suits due to their lax book keeping records. Always rather than address the problem they would put an eviction notice on her door and she would call me hysterical. Since they never answer their phones, my husband and I would take a day off of work and go over to straighten out the situation. Only once was it a problem on her end, and that was due to a check that never got to the office for rent. Even though I called each month after the eviction notice was left and was told it was an error and not to worry about it. But the following month it would happen again. It took a personal session with their accounting mgr.(5 minutes) to discover what had happened and we gave them a check. When my mother went in the nursing home we kept the apt. for a few months as we intially thought she might return home. After a couple of months we turned off the gas and cable and phone to save money. That was in Feb. In June we recieved a notice from them saying that turning the gas off was a violation of the lease and they were paying the gas bill and adding a process fee. My sister attempted to have the account turned back on in my mom's name only to be told that Fox Chase had to do it. We called Fox Chase and they said that the gas company had to do it. After much back and forth Fox Chase told us the easiest way to solve this was to open another account in our name which we did. We had been paying a gas bill to the gas company and assumed all was caught up. I furnished them with recipts for the gas bill we had been paying.

A couple of weeks later I recieved a court summons in the mail for non payment of Aug. and Sept rent. This was Aug. 26. I attempted to call the office but per usual no one answered. I called every day for a week, even tried calling the corporate office. No reponse to my messages. Finally I get a ledger page emailed to me with several gas bill charges and processing fees. I wrote back and said I thought we had taken care of that issue, and asked why the summoms for non payment of rent when they automatically debited her account on the first of every month. They just sent the ledger again. After about a week, I left a message on the corporate number telling them if I did not get some type of response I was contacting the media within 24 hrs.  I reeived a call and explained everything and was told I would hear back in 24 hours. Never did hear back, and I made numerous attempts to reach them again at the personal cell phone number that was given to me from the person that called me. I did find my mother's lease from 1985!! and there was NO clause in that lease regarding utilities. I asked for their most recent lease hey had on file and when I received that one, it has been expired for 2 years, and the clause was not in that one either. 

I now recieve an email saying the charges have been dropped and the case cancelled. But the Alexandria Court House site says it is still on. Spent two days trying to get in touch with them  to find out what is going on. Finally I get a response just saying it is cancelled, but the court clerk says the proper paperwork has not been submitted to cancel it, and she would advise me to show up.

Today I receive a list of charges, that are not itemized, but they are saying there were items that were not satisfactory when I vacated the apt. I took pictures of everything as I knew this would happen having read numerous reivews online of this same thing.Of course no one will respond to my phone calls and the amount is coincidentally the entire security deposit plus $35!!

After 29 years, you can not leave an apt. in move in condition, I emptied everything, cleaned and vacuumed. I feel this is how they earn extra money, people get tired of fighting them and just pay to make it go away. I can not afford to keep taking off of work to continually fight them. I think HUD should be involved and do an audit. I think there should be a way to stop them from continually preying on innocent people.

Really..to do this to a 96 yrs. old woman after 29 years in an apt. I feel this is Elder Abuse, Harrassment and Shady book keeping and outright stealing of her deposit!!