2763 Rue de Rouen

Should You Rent?

Reviewed on Jun 18, 2014

Overall score

12345

Friendly
Not too nosy
Does sloppy work, if at all
No lease
Dismissive of concerns

Please note that this review concerns not the actual landlord, but P. the janitor who lives in the building and acts on the landlord''s behalf (supposedly), takes care of your rent and fixes stuff (again, supposedly).

Looking for a first dwelling after a period of homelessness, I was searching for something cheap, but close to the metro. The place looked worn down, but I could not have high expectations for my budget. It was always meant to be temporary, but I ended up staying too long, for which I paid a high price.

I rented two apartments in this building, and in the second one, I had a break-in. My bad: ground floor, a rather exposed back yard, I had left the window open during the day, with only a mosquito screen up. (The reason that I''m still rating the neighbourhood fairly safe is that now I live 200 m down the street and the building has a completely different feel.)
My request for a grill on the window was flat out denied; as for replacing the mosquito net, I only got promises. P. was genuinely unmoved about my loss and just kept claiming how such thing had never happened here before.

This apartment is also furnished with an air conditioner. Sounds good, right? Except it was fixed into the window frame perpetually by a wood plank. The window is of the kind where the top part does not open, and the bottom part opens in four sliding sections. So the bottom part of my window, looked like this: air conditioner, wood plank (this is all eye level if you''re sitting on a chair), closed window (the fourth section slides here), open window (big enough for a skinny person to come in, apparently.) The air conditioner was obviously as crappy as expected, and consumed a lot of energy for not much effect.
At this point in time I had no tools of my own, so I asked P. to remove the useless and bothersome feature from my apartment. The answer was, either I do it myself or it stays like that... I didn''t realize that in winter the winds would blow through it, though. Had to cover it with a blanket.

Even better story, the first apartment was being renovated by this guy when I rented it. Upon moving in a few days later, I honestly thought that P. hadn''t finished the bathroom: it looked like the floor of the shower was missing, there was just the concrete floor painted black and a drain pipe sticking up about 2 inches. When I pointed this out to him, he claimed that it''s the best he could do, so it''s finished. (I have pictures!)
So after a while the constant puddle (the drain sticks out, remember?) started to work up the paint... and I ended up with black feet. I had to keep a pair of flippers exclusively for showering.
The building is full of shady characters, and it is entirely possible that the break-in was committed by a tenant. Police had to visit the building on an average of once every two weeks.

TL;DR: with no lease I felt powerless in front of a negligent janitor who, in my opinion, takes advantage of his underprivileged tenants.
Not recommended for anything longer than a month.