Thoughts on Apartment Complex Living

We have lived in our studio apartment for six months now.  Time for a few comments on apartment complex life.

Number one complaint:  too many dogs here!  People can have up to three dogs per apartment.  One couple has a St Bernard, a Pyrenees, and a Doberman.  All very large dogs.  I wonder how much room there is for people in that apartment.  Directly below us are two chihuahuas, directly below them are two bird dog types.  Up here on our third floor landing, there is a pit bull and on the second floor across from the chihuahuas there is a collie and a Heinz 57 something or other.  These are the ones I know about for sure.  When owners go to work in the morning, one of the dogs below us on the ground floor begins to howl.  The pit bull upstairs hears him and also begins to howl.  The chihuahuas begin to yip—a real symphony that can go on for hours.  Unfortunately we have zero control over this.  We can complain, but no one is home when this happens, so nothing much comes of complaints made to the leasing office.  I feel bad for the very forlorn dogs.  There seems to be at least one dog or cat in every nearby apartment, more likely two per apartment.  Our stairway services 12 apartments.  Every building has 3 such stairways, and there are 9 building in all.  You can see why we feel surrounded by an inordinate number of dogs.  We don’t see the cats, but we see litter box trash.  There’s a constant stream of dogs being walked outside all day long.  There are poop bag dispensers, trash cans, and SIGNS all over the place, but very few dog owners seem inclined to pick up after their dog(s).  The public walkway between us and the park is littered, both on the concrete and all along the edges, with innumerable piles of dog poo.  When there is snow on the ground, every pile of snow just outside the building doorways becomes yellow with pet urine right away because that’s as far as the owners are willing to walk their pets.  You get the picture—so many dogs around adds up to an incredible amount of pet waste.  They do have a dog park for residents, although it’s no way large enough for the number of dogs living here.  Walking past there, I am appalled that residents don’t pick up dog poo in there either.  There’s so much waste inside the dog park, you can barely see the wood chips on the ground.  I guess I’ve ranted enough about this for now.

Second major complaint:  people do not follow the stated procedure for the concierge trash service.  Sunday thru Thursday, leave your complex provided lidded trash can outside your door AFTER 6 pm.  The trash in the receptacle must be in a tied closed plastic trash bag.  The trash service guys will pick up your bag and haul it to one of the multiple nearby dumpsters, leaving the lidded plastic receptacle for you to bring inside.  I KNOW that everyone is given the appropriate kitchen size trash can when they move in.  However, most people do not set out their can.  Instead they set out bags of garbage directly on the concrete landing and those bags sometimes leak onto the concrete leaving stains that have been there now for months.  If their trash bag is leaking, the concierge won’t pick it up and it will sit there for days.  OR the tenant will carry the bag to the dumpster themselves but won’t rebag it, so a dribble of whatever is leaking follows them down all the stairs and along the sidewalk all the way to the dumpster.  Wonderful.  One neighbor carried such a leaking bag of trash down all the stairs, then left it in the building doorway for everyone to enjoy until the concierge service carried it the rest of the way to the dumpster.  The service does leave citations hanging on the doors of trash offenders, but they continue to do it incorrectly.  The leasing office sends out group emails that remind everyone of the process, but to no avail.  How can this be so hard?  Of course, these are the same people who don’t clean up after their dogs, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

We absolutely feel like we lucked out with the location of our apartment.  Our view is of the park next door instead of another apartment building.  We so enjoy our walks around the park and the lake that is there.  We can just barely see the lake from our windows now that the trees have lost their leaves.  Unfortunately the city is enlarging the lake (or digging a second lake beside the first?) and we can no longer walk all the way around it.  The sidewalk is blocked off and heavy machinery inside a fenced area take up a large section of the park.  It’ll be lovely when it’s done, I’m sure, but I’m also sure that it won’t be done before summer.