232 Spencer St,

Brooklyn, NY 11205

I was sold on the second-floor unit at first because of the large terrace, large living space, and affordable price. The amount of space is a big pro, and the bedroom window view is quite pretty (looks out onto the tree-filled backyard). The girl who lived here before me said she loved living here, but unfortunately I did not have the same experience. The building ownership changed right before I moved in, so that could be a major reason.

So many things went wrong while I was living here. I'm trying to break my lease now after just a few months.

- When I moved in, the unit was absolutely filthy and had a number of issues (drawer handles almost falling off, fridge shelf broken, random planks of wood on the floor, old food still in the kitchen sink drain, dead cockroaches in the drawers, broken terrace light, missing/uninstalled smoke detectors). The walls were covered in marks and badly in need of repainting, and the kitchen cabinets are also in poor shape (the wood looks very old). The previous tenant had covered the cabinets with peel-and-stick veneer that was peeling off.

Building management was extremely slow to respond to me when I contacted them. They were having a religious holiday right when I moved in, so they could not work during the time that I really needed their help. When I requested that the unit be cleaned because I could not unpack in its state, they said they could only send over a cleaner in a week. I requested that I find a cleaner and get reimbursed since the unit was not habitable, and they offered a $200 refund for the cleaning service that I hired. This barely covered a couple hours of cleaning, which was not enough to clean the whole apartment.

- In my lease, it says that management is supposed to cover heat and hot water. However, a month into my stay, I lost hot water entirely. I contacted management, and they said that I needed to call National Grid to restart service in my unit. Around this time, the upstairs neighbor had a gas leak, so a National Grid representative came over to inspect. I asked him to restart service in my unit, but he would not go down to the basement to do so because the building's basement stairs are in bad shape and he said it was a safety hazard. I ended up not having access to hot water for 2.5 weeks, taking cold showers in November. On top of the gas leak upstairs, there was a water leak downstairs and the building had to fix my tub to resolve the issue. It seems like this building always has maintenace issues.

- The straw that broke the camel's back was that lead was found in our building water. Lead showed up even in a filtered water sample. This building just doesn't feel safe to live in. It needs to be gut-renovated and updated to modern safety standards.