State Street Housing

great apartments and great area to live in . great neighbors also . not so great management .
Dec 26th, 2013

THE GOOD: The current management is terrific. Michelle, Amanda and Nick really look after residents and do lots of kind things like having holiday parties with great food, movie nights, etc. They arrange for a library bookmobile to visit the building and have health clinics and frequent entertainment like musicians come to play for residents. They even deliver packages to our apartments once or twice a week if they aren't picked up at the office. There is also a small grocery store (open 3 or 4 mornings a week) and a hair salon in the building, and even a little "library" with books that residents have donated which can be signed out. There's a large, lovely courtyard and a small terrace on the second floor. There are laundry rooms on every other floor. Every unit has an air conditioner in the living room, included in the utilities (although the cool air doesn't reach the bedrooms very well). The apartments are well laid-out with excellent closet space (two walk-in closets in the hall/living room, a pantry closet in the kitchen and a double closet with shelves behind in the bedroom). Maintenance does a great job of coming to our apartments quickly when something breaks. Now THE BAD: The building is old and necessary things don't work very well. The two elevators break down repeatedly and at one point recently we had NO working elevator at all for a day and a half, stranding elderly and disabled people who could not climb stairs to get to their apartments (or get down stairs to go out). In addition, it's winter and our heat and hot water aren't working very well. They were supposed to be spending a week replacing heating elements, but that was 3 weeks ago and they aren't done yet. We are without hot water - and sometimes any water - all day every day while they work on it (they turn it back on in the evenings). Half the laundry machines are broken. They all work on a weird system where you use a card that you've put money on to pay, but even with the machines that are working, it is super difficult to get them to accept the cards; you have to spend a while wiggling the card around and trying to get just the right position for the machine to read it, which is frustrating. In short, if State Street Housing would put some money into new elevators and laundry machines and updated the heating system, this would be the best building for elderly and disabled people in Portland.
Jun 4th, 2017