Myself and three other college students stayed at this apartment for about three months during our summer internships in Silicon Valley. The place had plenty of food options in short proximity and was close to many of the large tech campuses. However, it is located right next to the back parking lot of a discount liquor store that often had many people loitering around it. We sometimes felt uncomfortable when arriving back to the apartment late at night as college-age girls. Adding onto this, it says in the listing that the apartment does not have AC, so we were expecting that, but taking into account the street we were on, the fact that we were on the ground floor, and the fact that most of the windows did not have screens on them, it was very hard to cool off in the apartment since we did not want to leave windows without screens open on the ground floor. Also, I feel that the cleanliness standard can be improved for the arrival of future guests. Although the kitchen was clean, the floors were very dirty and both bed sheets in my room had hair and stains. I had to go out that same day and buy new sheets at Target. It did not seem like a cleaning crew had come in after the last guests. Although I did not notify the hosts about these issues because I knew I could fix them in a more timely manner, I think that the cleanliness standard for future guests must be raised. Additionally, some of the furniture, like the couch and kitchen table, were not in the best condition (very wobbly legs), and I think it would highly raise the quality of this place if these things were replaced. I also wanted to mention that the neighbors to this unit are very noisy, and the street/apartment complex did not feel the safest walking back to very late at night. Although these things are not in the host’s control, I feel that they are still important to note for future guests. Overall, I think that this apartment does the job for those that need housing with short notice, but for this price point there are higher quality rentals in Silicon Valley.
I was a little bit disappointed with my interactions with Tim and Sabina. At the beginning of my stay, I noticed that there was an extremely strong natural gas smell in the unit I was staying in. I contacted these hosts about this issue, and they quickly assured me that it was likely due to the old heater in the hallway. We took this response at face-value initially, but after about two months of staying in the unit with this smell, it became almost unbearable. We ended up having to call PG&E at about 10 PM on a weekday because the smell was making a couple of us in the unit start to feel sick, and after describing the smell to them, they decided it was necessary to come out to the unit that same night. We waited up for the gas company until close to midnight, and when they came they found a natural gas leak and shut off the gas to the apartment. Luckily this only affected the heater and no other appliances, but a hazard notice was written. We had also experienced problems with a clogged shower drain the prior night and had contacted Tim and Sabina about that issue, hearing no response for 24 hours. We sent them the hazard report after the gas company left and bumped our previous message about the shower drain, but we had still heard no response for a few hours. We ultimately decided to call AirBnB to ask what we should do about the shower in the event that the hosts do not respond and also mentioned that there was a natural gas leak in the unit that the hosts also were not addressing. Tim and Sabina ended up responding to us after we called AirBnB asking us to send the notice to them, but by then AirBnB had already reached out to them about the natural gas safety hazard that we had experienced in their unit. Instead of apologizing for this hazard and thanking us for taking our own time to have the gas company come out at a late hour to resolve this issue, we were angrily approached and questioned as to why we reported these issues to AirBnB. Tim and Sabina told us that their time had been wasted and repeatedly complained that this whole situation was very inconvenient for them, when in reality we as the guests were the ones who lived with this smell for two months and spent three hours resolving this issue that had been brought up to our hosts early in our stay yet brushed aside. We received no thank you or apology for the situation and were then told that they were doing us a “favor” by not charging us for the shower problems. Overall, these hosts were very defensive and did not take responsibility for the unsafe gas levels in their unit, and at that point forward we were very hesitant to contact these hosts again.