It took me a while to write my review because I wanted to be over the experience, and not leave an emotional review after I vacated the unit.
I’ll start by saying when I voiced my concerns to Vicki, she was very responsive as far as communication with me, but not so interested in rectifying my safety concerns with the property.
The unit is a small and quaint remodeled stand alone building behind a main house. The unit itself is cozy, I didn’t have any issues with the space itself, other than I agree with other reviews about the bathroom being awkward and you are blocked in the driveway by the front house vehicle and need to coordinate with them to come and go. Annoying, but this wasn’t a surprise to me.
My issue was my safety. There is French doors with only one bolt in the center of the two doors. As soon as I got there I was uncomfortable, as when I locked the doors, I noticed I was able to still move them considerably by pulling on the handle even after being locked. There was no safety latch, no slide lock that goes from the top of the doors to the wall above to secure the doors in additional areas.
Bottom line: The doors could have been pushed in from the outside, and there was nothing on the inside to prevent this from happening.
What made this experience even worse, is that when I decided to spend the night and give it a try, the following morning after getting no sleep and voicing even more issues I was experiencing to Vicki, she turned from caring and concerned, to telling me that my complaints “are now becoming silly” and also called them “fabricated.”
So I vacated immediately and I will never return.
I’ll add that the neighborhood isn’t great. There are bars on most windows and there are a number of homeless people in the area. Neither of these things would have alone caused me to vacate the unit. But being I had no real protection from someone on the outside being able to push the doors open into my unit was my main concern.
And I was also expected to feel safe because I was behind a driveway gate that locks and also the fact there’s a Ring doorbell. Which I just did not. I’m born and raised in New York City and in an area with bars on windows and homeless roaming, its expected more locks to be on doors. Just common sense where I’m from.
On a side note, the hotel I checked into had a homeless man sleeping literally in front of my door during my stay at one point. I did not vacate that property as I had four locks on my door and I did not feel threatened. That’s the difference.