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| - I lived in a JJ Land apartment for 6 years, two separate units in the same building in Friendship.
Pros: lax pet policy, and when I was underemployed they would let late payments slide a few weeks before calling me to check in on why I hadn't paid. A couple months I gave partial payments and they didn't harass me, but I always squared up as soon as I could. The building itself was beautiful but poorly maintained. I had an off street parking spot which was nice. Maintenance was often quick to respond to little things (not the big ones, though) and I found that if I took the time to talk to the guys and treat them kindly (I worked nights so was often home when they came by) most of them would do a better job and also started taking my requests sooner.
I got all of my security deposit back less some back rent I owed.
Cons:
When I first moved to PGH I had rented my apartment over the phone from JJ Land but no one at any point had told me it was a basement apartment with no windows. When I got to the apartment with my cat and my UHaul I was shocked! It smelled like a dirty toilet had leaked in there and was left to rot for a year and there was not a single window to ventilate. I called furious and the leasing agent, who has since left, found me another apartment for a similar price in a nearby location that was becoming available the next day so I moved in to that.
the owner is a total asshole. One time my heat was broken and I called for 3 weeks with nothing being done, so I called the health department. They came by a cited the landlord for multiple violations including red-tagging the furnace. My oven had been red-tagged a week earlier due to a gas leak. When Jeff, the owner, came with a guy from the gas company to inspect the furnace he said "Why did you call the gas company for the 10th f***ing time?!"
Next was the mold. A pin-hole leak in the water heater caused the entire basement to fill with mold. The smell came up through holes in the floor (my apt was the entire first floor). My cat and I both got respiratory infections and all my stuff stored in the basement was ruined. I called three times and no one even came by so finally I put all the moldy stuff in a garbage bag and brought it right into their office and left it there. Needless to say, someone came the next day. I was told they would replace the moldy drywall but instead it was painted over with mold kill paint. This happened three times as the paint did not work. When they finally tore out the moldy drywall a month later they left it propped against the back wall of the building!
Since I couldn't live there for the whole month I told them I would not be paying rent. I had reported this incident to the health department as well. The accountant cornered me at the gas station one day asking about why I hadn't paid the rent and said they were going to take me to the magistrate to which I said "go for it, the heath dept has a record that the apartment was uninhabitable" and they ended up waiving that month's rent which the magistrate would have inevitably done anyway.
When I lived on the second floor, the apartment above me had a leak that was causing my dropped ceiling to collapse. When I called to report it they said that it was raining so a roofer couldn't come out today. I explained that I lived on the second floor of a three floor building and that above me was not a roof, but a bathroom....full of plumbing. The person did not seem to understand the issue. I had to talk to two other people before someone understood the issue and a maintenance guy came. He replaced the dropped ceiling tiles but left the old ones - along with a bag of rat poison that had been up there - on my bathroom floor.
That is just a "highlight" of the bigger problems I encountered.
Basically, if you are willing to fight fervently for your renters rights and you go into the office to pay rent and notify them of maintenance issues in person you are more likely to get things done. It's a hassle and they don't like it when you report them, but if you choose to live in a JJ Land apartment just make sure you have the number for the health department and the BPLI so you can report them to the appropriate authorities when they try to take advantage of you.
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