roxieuke

Unfortunately, this does cause a bit of problem in the neighborhood. An acquaintance of mine lives on the Prospect-facing side of the Osborn building, and has bemoaned the constant fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances coming at all hours of day and night. He likewise bemoans all of the Cartor Manor residents who like to hang out outside in front of the building, making noise at all hours of day and night. The management did ask security to keep check on people being loud out front, but it isn't like "security" has much more power than to ask people "please quiet down -- it's late and we've got neighbors across the street who want to sleep." We just had a real fire around 4:30 this morning. The alarms were going off inside of the building for 12 minutes before we finally heard the fire truck sirens approaching outside. Yes -- a very real fire was burning for more than 12 minutes before they arrived on site. The internal alarm had been going off for 10 minutes when one of the tenant council staff started knocking on doors to let everyone know -- the alarm is REAL -- get out! THAT'S how many false alarms we have! I nearly choked laughing this afternoon when I found this article: http://www.bxmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=549 Billiards tables? Library? Doctors offices? Service vans? New HVAC? HAAHAAHAA! They put in a new chiller on the AC THIS SUMMER after the old one was broken for nearly a full year, and I assure you -- the HVAC units inside all 270 apartments are NOT new. I wonder what propaganda they're smoking(?) And it's true -- the news ignores us here. All of the money for those fabled amenities gets wasted on paying false alarm fees to the local fire houses, and to repairing our nice "new" (hah!) elevators every time they break down. There's nothing that will make you shake your head like watching 15 people cram into an elevator after we've all evacuated for a false alarm -- yet again -- just to see "out of order" signs on the elevators thereafter. One time just this past week, I had to wait 9 minutes for the one working elevator out of 3 total. When they did the renovation -- sure, they refused to renew leases for more than 60% of the tenants who had all manor of violations in their records that disqualify people to live in HUD housing. When management suddenly wasn't collecting any HUD subsidy on vacant apartments, a certain leasing agent [who is now thankfully gone] was turning a blind eye on a lot of applications, not running proper background checks, etc. -- so some of the folks kicked out just months earlier ... moved right back in. The current leasing agents are both very nice and do what they can to make sure all new tenants meet the HUD regulations, but even so -- they can only do so much to address the problem of off-lease family members who are not qualified to live here "temporarily staying" with tenants long term. There was one guy whose lease was not renewed last year because when he moved in, he said he was divorced and his ex-wife had full custody of the kids; however, after he moved into a one bedroom apartment -- somehow his five kids moved into the apartment while he mainly stayed ... with his ex-wife. Five minors; no adult supervision. To anyone who lives at the Osborn or at Huron Square -- if Cartor/Winton Manor is a nuisance to you -- please file a complaint to Winton Manor management, to the city, to the news, to whoever! Management is really jaded about complaints from their own residents. Your complaints are the only reason management bothered asking security to keep an eye on the noise level from loitering residents out front. Your complaints may be the only hope for Winton Manor to really shape up its act and become a good neighbor. Just please be polite to the on-site office staff -- don't shoot your messenger. Complain to the actual property management. The on-site office staff gets harassed by tenants with all manner of complaints all the time. They are just leasing agents and messengers between the tenants and property management / maintenance, not much real power there. Please help Winton Manor become a good neighbor! Complain to MJM Management and the Ferchill Group!