Village Green of Lansing High rent, poor maintenance, no security, insect infestation, management does not care Lansing Michigan

I lived at Village Green of Lansing for 3 years, moving from a 2-bedroom unit in one of the gray buildings to a 3 bedroom unit in one of the brick buildings, and then to a second 3-bedroom unit in a different brick building. The 2-bedroom unit was fine, though the air conditioning did not work well. As for the 3-bedroom units...

The first one we moved into was a ground floor apartment. Again, the air conditioning did not work and the place had ants, carpet beetles, and spiders. We called about the bugs and Rose Pest Control was dispatched, apparantly for the express purpose of telling us there was nothing they could do. That was bad, but what was worse was the fact that in February of that year, one of the pipes running through the ceiling burst and flooded one of the closets, damaging clothing and other personal items. Maintenance came in and cut a big hole in the ceiling.

After staring at the leaking pipe for a while, they told us that the best they could do was put a bucket under the leak, and once the temperature got above zero, they would be back to fix it. After that, in spite of many calls on the many "above zero" days that followed, they refused to fix either the pipe or the ceiling until the following June, and that only because we refused to pay rent for June until they fixed the problem. By that time, however, we'd had enough. A top floor apartment became available, so we went for it (moving to a different complex or a house was out of our price range at that time).

While the pipes in the new unit were intact, the place soon proved to be a haven for insects. More beetles, more spiders, wasps, flies, you name it. More calls to management, we were placed on the exterminator list many times but they only actually showed-up once. This, however, was minor compared to another growing problem: crime.

Village Green, for all of its maintenance failings, was a safe place when I initially moved in. Since then, they have rented more and more to seedy and disreputable people. There are always strange people who do not belong driving through the parking lots and roaming the unsecured lobby and stair areas of the buildings. Management has received complaints, and has done nothing except watch the problem get worse.

For us, the issue came to a crisis in late May of this year, when a gang of thieves systematically broke into 11 cars at Village Green, the Meijer, and at the nearby Plum Tree Apartments, and stole ours! My inital coversation with Village Green about the theft, when I asked what they were going to do to keep this from happening again, I was told not to blame my community, that my loss was not their problem, and that they would do nothing. A couple of weeks later, more theives were seen again, slowly driving the parking lot, casing out the cars. When a police car came by, they drove off. That same car has been seen numerous times since.

I have left Village Green. The place is trying hard to live up to its nickname, Ghetto Green, and neither myself, nor my family, need to be there when it hits rock bottom.