Hi folks. Before my fiance and I begin interviewing attorneys, we want to socialize our story to better understand if we have enough to pursue, despite us feeling like we do. We live in an apartment community in Gwinnett County, GA. Looks good from a prospective resident perspective but the experience with the leasing employees has become a much different experience. The community provides dog bag waste stations throughout the property. The waste stations are a "service" they provide to the residents through a 3rd party supplier who we (residents) have no direct agreement or encouraged interaction with. The property (assumed) is managing that B2B relationship. We learned that the community has 410 units and the property manager told us that over 50% of their residents have dogs. The waste stations are generally out of bags with what we have seem to be anywhere from a week up to three weeks in some cases without being refilled. Unfortunately, our neighbors are lazy during the lulls of the stations being empty and leave their pet waste behind on the ground.
The property manager also informed us that it is the responsibility of their groundskeeper to keep things like this in order. We learned all of this from her because we have made numerous complaints (documented) to the office that there is dog waste in all of the grass in the common areas where we walk our dogs, we have found the waste all over the sidewalks and have even provided them with pictures to not only help tell the story but also to let them know where it was located. Keep in mind, my fiance and I work from home and we are also in the midst of the holidays. So in our eyes, we are walking away from dollars to worry about dimes. A couple of weeks ago, my fiance took our dog out one morning and without seeing it, slipped on a large pile of waste and fell on her back. She had the waste all over herself and her clothes and immediately got back up, took a picture of the waste, and came back inside to clean herself up. Within an hour we both went to speak with the property manager but she was not in the office. We explained the story to another member of her team and we were told that the property manager would contact us when she returned. By 3 o'clock that afternoon, no one had contacted us so we both went to the office to follow up. Before going, we decided that we were going to put the story in an email that way we had our version documented on their system to avoid the risk of them trying to oversimplify the story later in case this situation escalated.
We spoke to the property manager who, after multiple attempts of trying to interrupt us with placations, assured us there would be "consequences" for her staff. We made it clear that is not an acceptable remedy for the situation as her punishing her staff is frankly none of our concern nor does that offer help to address the immediate problems at hand. I explained that my fiance is in pain due to the fall and that she would be going to be evaluated by a medical provider. She asked my fiance if she was okay and my fiance explained that she was going to see a doctor to make sure. The property manager replied that she hoped it was nothing serious and we ended the conversation. Later the same day, we took our dogs out and found that the waste my fiance fell in was still there and also the other various areas of waste we had noticed were also still there. We took pictures. The metadata of our photos are date / time stamped. My fiance fell on 11/22/19 most if not all of the pet waste spots we provided them information on are still there today. At this point, we are both justifiably frustrated with the negligent, disrespectful, and condescending attitude, behavior, and treatment we are receiving from a community that we are paying a total of $20k+ / year for. So we began getting educated on the language used in our lease and weighed that against the Gwinnett County landlord / tenant handbook of laws. Expectedly, we found a significant imbalance between the verbiage the community uses in their lease agreement which, initially, created a perspective of "legal validity" for us when we had originally signed. However, now that we are better educated on our legal rights in a landlord/ tenant agreement, we understand that there is simply a company-funded attorney authoring these leases in the arrogant hopes that none of their residents ever take the time to become better educated. There is additional information about this situation we have to share that continues to paint an even less flattering picture of not just this community but also the company itself as our situation is merely an example of a much broader trend of what we have learned, through other fellow resident stories (we cannot prove) to be commonplace culture of how this billion dollar company operates.
Since all of you invest the better part of your daily lives into not only the educational side of these situations but you also have intimate knowledge of how these situations are viewed and handled by the judges, by the defense, we want to learn from you; the experts, what is our next best step to take here?
The property manager also informed us that it is the responsibility of their groundskeeper to keep things like this in order. We learned all of this from her because we have made numerous complaints (documented) to the office that there is dog waste in all of the grass in the common areas where we walk our dogs, we have found the waste all over the sidewalks and have even provided them with pictures to not only help tell the story but also to let them know where it was located. Keep in mind, my fiance and I work from home and we are also in the midst of the holidays. So in our eyes, we are walking away from dollars to worry about dimes. A couple of weeks ago, my fiance took our dog out one morning and without seeing it, slipped on a large pile of waste and fell on her back. She had the waste all over herself and her clothes and immediately got back up, took a picture of the waste, and came back inside to clean herself up. Within an hour we both went to speak with the property manager but she was not in the office. We explained the story to another member of her team and we were told that the property manager would contact us when she returned. By 3 o'clock that afternoon, no one had contacted us so we both went to the office to follow up. Before going, we decided that we were going to put the story in an email that way we had our version documented on their system to avoid the risk of them trying to oversimplify the story later in case this situation escalated.
We spoke to the property manager who, after multiple attempts of trying to interrupt us with placations, assured us there would be "consequences" for her staff. We made it clear that is not an acceptable remedy for the situation as her punishing her staff is frankly none of our concern nor does that offer help to address the immediate problems at hand. I explained that my fiance is in pain due to the fall and that she would be going to be evaluated by a medical provider. She asked my fiance if she was okay and my fiance explained that she was going to see a doctor to make sure. The property manager replied that she hoped it was nothing serious and we ended the conversation. Later the same day, we took our dogs out and found that the waste my fiance fell in was still there and also the other various areas of waste we had noticed were also still there. We took pictures. The metadata of our photos are date / time stamped. My fiance fell on 11/22/19 most if not all of the pet waste spots we provided them information on are still there today. At this point, we are both justifiably frustrated with the negligent, disrespectful, and condescending attitude, behavior, and treatment we are receiving from a community that we are paying a total of $20k+ / year for. So we began getting educated on the language used in our lease and weighed that against the Gwinnett County landlord / tenant handbook of laws. Expectedly, we found a significant imbalance between the verbiage the community uses in their lease agreement which, initially, created a perspective of "legal validity" for us when we had originally signed. However, now that we are better educated on our legal rights in a landlord/ tenant agreement, we understand that there is simply a company-funded attorney authoring these leases in the arrogant hopes that none of their residents ever take the time to become better educated. There is additional information about this situation we have to share that continues to paint an even less flattering picture of not just this community but also the company itself as our situation is merely an example of a much broader trend of what we have learned, through other fellow resident stories (we cannot prove) to be commonplace culture of how this billion dollar company operates.
Since all of you invest the better part of your daily lives into not only the educational side of these situations but you also have intimate knowledge of how these situations are viewed and handled by the judges, by the defense, we want to learn from you; the experts, what is our next best step to take here?
