I stayed at Sahara Apartments during the summer of 2015 while I was an REU student at NOAO. I cannot in good faith recommend staying at Sahara Apartments. Although many of the staff members were friendly and the location is close to downtown, my experience at Sahara Apartments was extremely negative.
I will begin with the facilities. Most importantly, the rooms (I stayed in a two-person studio with a balcony) are very small. There is barely enough room to fit the two beds in the area, especially one wall needs enough space for the kitchen. To make matters worse, the roof leaked every time it rained (I was there during the monsoon season), and when my roommate and I asked a member of the staff to take a look at it, we were told that the landlord had known about the roof being a problem for a while. In addition, the pool area was nice, but not well maintained. Also, I was originally very excited that there was a gym on location, but the gym equipment was essentially unusable. The treadmill slipped when above walking speeds, the bike and elliptical seemed to be on the edge of falling apart, and the weight training equipment was almost nonexistent. Worst of all, bike theft is a regular problem, since tenants are encouraged to use a bike rack that is easy to cut into.
To some degree, I was willing to tolerate all of the issues with the building, since the price of staying for a few months was unobjectionable. However, my interactions with the manager were unforgivable. After running into some issues with the payment system, I sent the manager a brief email asking for clarification about a charge on my invoice (which listed no explanation of charges) before I made the payment. Instead of a simple explanation that part of my original payment had not gone through the system properly (a problem that others had already had with the system), I received an email telling me to ‘do the math’ and chastising me for (and I quote) ‘copping an attitude’, being ‘indignant and belligerent’, and accusing me of thinking they were trying to cheat me.
When I went to meet with him about the incident, the manager further patronized me when I asked him for an explanation of the problem with the system and noted that his hostile response seemed unprovoked. He told me that in asking to meet with him privately I was ‘acting like his daughter’ and refused to speak to me about any of my concerns regarding my continued use of the payment system or his treatment of his patrons. Although I will not speak for my peers, I am struck by the fact that most of the male students that I knew who interacted with the manager were treated with much more respect than the female students.
I would hope that most tenants at Sahara Apartments have more positive experiences, but I wish that I had encountered an honest review or two before making the decision to stay there last summer.
Jacklyn Pezzato
February 17, 2016
