I read Andrew Tibbetts’ article in the February 8 issue of The Poly that briefly alluded to Troy Student Housing—formerly RPI Rentals—and their disregard for the promises they make to renters. As a warning to current students, I’d like to share my experience with this company, but first let me say that I strongly encourage the Poly to refuse their advertisements in the future—like the full-page ad in that same issue.

During my senior year at RPI, some friends and I signed a lease with RPI Rentals. The place was a bit run down, but the owners, Maximus Yaney and his wife, promised that they would paint and do numerous other large and small repairs. I got most of the promises in writing via e-mail before we paid our security deposit, but even this was worthless because I took them at their word when they made less-than-equivocal statements like “we hope to get that floor fixed in the next three weeks.” They never said “We’ll fix the floor by [some date],” and they later reminded us of this fact.

On move-in day, none of the work had been done and the apartment was a trash heap. The prior tenants had left every imaginable kind of trash strewn throughout the apartment—dirty underwear on the living room floor was a highlight. RPI Rentals apparently didn’t take their agreement to clean the place very seriously. When they did finally “clean” the apartment at our insistence, three people came through and did the fastest apartment cleaning I’ve ever seen—15 minutes to clean every floor and surface. They swept with a push-broom and mopped the entire big apartment with a single bucket of water. Needless to say, we then cleaned the entire apartment ourselves.

When the painter finally arrived a month after we moved in, he did a similar hack-type job; slopping a thin film of flat white paint over every surface except the ceilings (which he didn’t paint at all). Every stain on the walls was still visible through the thin coating, only now we had little paint splatters on the floors and the wood trim. In order to have a decent looking apartment, we painted it ourselves.

RPI Rentals broke almost every promise they made by simply dragging their feet until we were apathetic about ever getting anything done. They started out tremendously attentive and friendly until we paid our first month’s rent, after which, they ignored almost every communication but emergencies. They had an e-mail address that they sporadically responded to and a voicemail box that was usually full to capacity.

As my lease wound down, I made sure every prospective tenant knew about the horrible experience I’d had with RPI Rentals and they ended up having to decrease the rent by $150 in order to rent the place out. I also had a Troy city official inspect the building, which resulted in RPI Rentals getting cited for numerous code violations and receiving monthly fines until the problems were remedied. Many of these were the same items they had promised to fix for us.

Almost two years after the fact, I’m still irked by RPI Rentals, and I’d love to see them go out of business. I think it’s a shame that they’re still duping unsuspecting students with their prominent ads in The Poly, on the on-line housing database, and on the Union bulletin boards. I’ve talked with many current and former students who have had similar awful experiences with them and yet they’re still allowed to promote their business on the RPI campus. I’d love to see an investigative piece in the Poly about how they treat students, the fact that they’re absentee landlords—they live in Iowa—that they “changed management”, but Maximus and his wife still own the place. Maybe follow that up with a Poly opinion poll showing what percentage of respondents had bad experiences with these schmucks. Most of all, I’d like to see all of their on-campus advertising refused. This would hurt them where it counts—in their bottom line.

Rich Woodrow