BRE Properties - We Don’t Care If You’re Trapped

BRE Properties, (the company that owns the upscale apartment complex in Menlo Park, where my grandmother lives) is edging itself closer and closer to a lawsuit.  As some of you know, I visit my grandmother regularly, and therefore experience the quality of BRE Properties practices many times a week. BRE Properties changes management faster than I change socks (some of you can vouch for that).  The maintenance crews of BRE Properties have been completely incompetent for the past 12 years.  The laundry machines of BRE Properties are perpetually broken, and take days to fix.  The architectural quality of BRE Properties buildings is so low, some residents might as well live in huts.  BRE Property buildings are falling apart and leaking.  God forbid you need any maintenance.  It took BRE Properties more than 10 YEARS to replace a broken heating and air unit.  Every year my grandmother called to report it malfunctioning, and every year the incompetent BRE Properties maintenance would arrive, turn some knobs, tell her they’d be back, and NEVER fix it.

For the past 27 YEARS she has been living in flood conditions in the winter.  When it rains, the walkways out of her BRE Properties apartment get flooded, and trap her inside (pictured above).  When I visit her BRE Properties apartment, I have to walk along muddy slope banks to reach her.  The liability of this scenario is hilarious.  Forget that people have to walk through 4-6 inches of water, soaking themselves and their shoes and pants, at this BRE Properties complex, if they wanted to avoid it, they risk falling down on a muddy slope.

And this BRE Properties complex is located in a fairly affluent part of silicon valley, where residents are lucky if they pay $2600 a month for a 2 bedroom.  That’s what $2600/mo. gets you with BRE Properties.