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Poor apartment conditions leave students unable to move into their units
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BATON ROUGE - The start of a new semester is an exciting new season for students at Southern and LSU who were excited to get their own space at a nearby apartment complex. Not long after the ink dried on the lease, parents got a look at the unit conditions and started asking for refunds at the Campus Crossing apartments on Brightside.
Chloe Comeaux is the parent of a student at Southern University. She says the complex violated the lease from the start. On move-in day, August 19, families thought they were getting a good deal at $410 per person in a four room suite.
"The rent was reasonable for her," Comeaux said. "She would be paying her own rent. We decided to go for it with the lease."
As the families moved in, parents documented the conditions, taking pictures of mold, dirty socks left behind, and filthy kitchens.
"There was trash everywhere, Comeaux said. "Outside on the patio was toilet paper rolls, trash, cigars, the stuff that goes in cigars, t-shirts. It was horrible."
Before signing leases, families toured a model unit - not the one the kids would ultimately live in. Felicia Taylor says her family is from Shreveport. When she saw the conditions, she got a hotel room for her son to stay in until they found a new space.
"They had to sign the lease before they could get the key," Taylor said. "So once they were given the key, we entered the apartment. We noticed that there was mold and the apartment was very dirty."
Parents expressed concerns to management on move-in day. They say still nothing's been done and their kids are still being charged for rent.
"She promised us that she would get house keeping out to clean the apartment, and the house keeping never came," Taylor said. "We spent the whole day there, waiting on someone to come."
Comeaux was told her daughter could just move to another unit.
"There are like 20 other families out here complaining about the same thing," Comeaux said. "So I don't see how moving her into another apartment would fix the situation."
Comeaux and Taylor both refused to allow their children to move into the units. They say at this point they just want their children's names off the leases.
"At this point, we don't even want to deal with these guys," Comeaux said. "We just want to get our money back. They told us no."
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