🚀 go-pugleaf

After perusing the posts that are the influx of this very intriguing
thread, six words spring immediately to mind:

Village Glen Apartments on Burton Drive.

I moved to Austin in January of 1990 to continue my college education at
UT. About a month before I made the move I called a couple of good friends
in town and inquired about decent rental properties, their locations, and
prices. One friend suggested I move into the Village Glen complex because
it provided "a lotta space for a little price." And he was right. In
January of '90, a 1-1 with approximately 750 square feet at Village Glen
went for $270. My, my, what a deal! I did need the space for I owned too
much furniture, and didn't want to part with any of it. I had also seen
the complex before, as well as my friend's own 1-1, on a couple of trips
to Austin a year before. Needless to say, I was sold. Two weeks before
moving I visited and signed a lease for my very own Village Glen
Xanadu-riffic apartment.

My parents accompanied me to Austin when I moved. My mother's first words
upon surveying the Village Glen asphaltscape were, "This place is a
shithole." I didn't think it was that bad. I did, however, after my car
was broken into in March, and my apartment in September. But I'm getting
ahead of myself.

The apartments were supposed to be furnished with nifty little microwave
ovens. My apartment was without on the day I signed the lease. I had the
"leasing agent" at Village Glen stipulate in the lease that one be
installed before I moved in. They had two weeks. Needless to say the damn
thing wasn't in the kitchen when I did arrive on that foreboding January
afternoon. I called the management office and complained. "Wonderful," I
was thinking to myself. "Here I am not ninety minutes in my new apartment
and I'm already complaining to the management." It took the so-called
maintenance crew four days after my call to deliver the stupid thing. (And
as a single guy living by himself, I needed it. Ha!) And when they did
deliver it, they helped themselves to doughnuts, Doritos, and half a
bottle of Coke. I am not lying, this is the honest-to-God's truth.

I came home from class and could see the microwave attached underneath a
cupboard from the front door. Okay, so I was happy. I flung my bookbag
onto the couch and went to take a gander at the helpful appliance. Before
I noted the absence of my foodstuffs I noticed a pink work order carbon on
the countertop. I read it and discovered that it took *two* maintenance
men to deliver this 14" x 18" microwave oven; their names were on the
paper. I then cast a cursory glance at the now-opened plastic HEB doughnut
box next to the fridge. My jaw dropped to the floor. I had purchased the
doughnuts the night before and didn't open the box. But there it was...a
box two famous-HEB-sour-cream-doughnuts short of four. My mind reeled. I
couldn't believe it. These two assholes simply had to deliver a microwave
oven, and couldn't help themselves from the doughnu...what in the hell is
my Doritos bag doing on the counter instead of in the pantry where I put
it last night?! 

To make a horribly long story short, they also drank from a then-unopened
Coca-Cola bottle. I threw it away. So there it was: My groceries providing
a little snack for the hungry maintenance men. The very same men that have
keys to my apartment. Whee! I called the then-manager/owner, a smarmy,
cretinous crook named Jim Crockett, and told him what had happened. He
chortled heartily. "Now that didn't happen. They didn't eat your food."  I
was livid. "Oh, they most certainly did. I am not kidding! What are you
gonna do about this?" He asked for the names on the work order, said he'd
made a note of them, and would inqure. Somehow I doubted it.

Time marches on...into March. The night before some pals and I were to hit
the high road to Colorado for Spring Break, my car is broken into.
Apparently the thieves were looking to foist the stereo, but couldn't get
it out. (That sucker was damn near bolted into the dash.) As a consolation
to themselves, though, the thieves busted out three of the six windows in
the car, ripped the passenger's side-mirror off, and punctured the
dashboard repeatedly with one of the sharp tools they had brought along.
When a cop came out to file a report he said to me, "You know, this
complex has a terrible crime rate. We're probably out here every day
filing one kind of report or another like yours. I'd suggest moving out."
He looked sorry for me when I told him I had my signature on a
twelve-month lease.

It's now September of '90. I'd been living mostly without incident at
Village Glen, save for the couple next door that argued every single
night. I came home around two in the morning on one night, and noticed
that my front door was wide open from the parking lot. I shut the car off
and ran to my apartment screaming obscenities along the way. I got to the
doorway and found out that I had been robbed...of damn near everything:
television, VCR, stereo, hundreds of audiocassettes, CDs, albums, tennis
shoes, shirts, a lamp, food, et cetera. Bright and early the next morning,
yet another police officer and myself knocked on the doors of my immediate
neighbors and on the doors of those neighbors across the little park that
separated the two buildings. "Did you see anyone removing my property? Did
you see anyone that appeared to be moving my stuff out, but wasn't
really?" Everybody told me absolutely not. "Nobody saw nothin'." So, it
was probably an inside job, so to speak. How were my neighbors divvying up
my belongings? Who the fuck knew? What I did know was that I had to move
out, and do it within a week or two.

Jim Crockett wasn't especially sympathetic. While I ranted about the
piss-poor quality of the security that he advertised as a "perk" of living
at Village Glen, the creep would look at the ceiling, the stapler on his
desk, beyond me into the other room. At one point he looked directly at
his watch and gave a little sigh. Was it a speech he'd heard many times
before? Was he the kingpin of all the crime that went on within the
confines of his sprawling megalopolis of shit? I thought so. Jim's
attention *was* obtained, however, when I informed him that I was going to
move out within fourteen days. "No, you're not. Not without breaking the
lease you're not." I was aghast. "I've had my car and apartment broken
into with six months of each other at this place. You mean to tell me with
all that's befallen me as your tenant you're going to consider my decision
to move out, for the most obvious reasons in the world, as a breaking of
the lease? I need to get the hell out of here for my own sake, not yours!"
He looked sternly at me and replied, "If you break the lease you'll owe me
so much money that if you don't pay it, I will file legal papers." I told
him he was a fucking asshole and walked out.

I did move out eight days later into a quaint little 1-1 in the heart of
Hyde Park. I live not six blocks from there today. I couldn't believe that
life could be so good after my Village Glen experience. I don't know if
Jim filed those papers or not. If he did it certainly hasn't prohibited me
from renting elsewhere, acquiring charge accounts, and writing checks--all
since September of '90. And to end on a sweet note, I saw an interesting
story on the KVUE 10:00 p.m. newscast about a month ago on dangerous,
crime-ridden apartment complexes in Austin. Can you guess which was the
star of this newsstory? Village Glen! The manager/owner is no longer
Crockett, but someone with about as much compassion though. When asked if
he informed current and potential tenants about the EIGHTY-EIGHT incidents
of crime reported at Village Glen last year, the manager replied, "No,
because that's not my business to. I don't have to. Crime happens
everywhere. It's not my responsibility to make that statistic known."
Figures. He's following in Jimmy-boy's footsteps to be sure.

I don't really know the purpose of having written all of this. Maybe I
needed to vent. There's tens of apartment managers/owners that don't give
a damn about their tenants, and will skirt the envelope of gross
negligence, mismanagement, and crooked ways and means until they get out
of the business one way or another, are killed, or get caught perpetrating
their illegalities. Yes, the TAA lease favors the owner, not the tenant.
Property leasors in Austin have got to love that, considering the number
of young persons that go to school and make their homes here.
Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, the neighborhood *does* make a
difference, and you're going to probably stop getting messed around with
when you're in your late 20s, looking to lease a place that's no doubt
three times the amount you're paying now. These apartments managers want
to screw the "irresponsible" college students first before they screw
them. And believe me, they'll do it.

In any regard, don't move into Village Glen Apartments at 2000/2010 Burton
Drive, off East Riverside. And if you're already there, don't renew the
lease. You'll be glad you didn't.

You can stop reading now.

-- 
Acid casualty with a repossessed car
Vietnam vet playin' air-guitar
It's just the shit-kickin', speed-takin',
Truck-drivin' neighbors downstairs.

                Ooooh my goodness...