Several Hood students have voiced complaints that their accommodations at Sunset Apartments have upkeep issues and are not being maintained properly.

The most frequent complaints students have are concerning outlets not working properly, dysfunctional heating and cooling, and slow internet.

Students said they had more serious complaints when moving into Sunset at the beginning of the Fall semester. Many students said they had appliances that needed to be replaced at the start of the school year and that the state of cleanliness was less than satisfactory at that time.

            Taylor Anderson, a junior and resident at Sunset Apartments has several complaints with Sunset. The problem that is first and foremost he says is that the apartment has many damages from previous owners still present.

Anderson said within that first month of moving in his apartment’s dryer, water heater, air conditioning, and several cabinets and drawers needed to be replaced. He also said that the walls were dirty, appearing as if they had not been repainted and that there were numerous holes in the walls around the apartment.

           “They [the holes] weren’t taken care of,” Anderson said. “We just hung stuff up over them.”

Anderson said that within a few days of making maintenance requests he was able to get the appliances replaced, but that his cabinets have still not been fixed.

Zach Luhman, Head of Hood Residence Life, said the school goes through the apartments after each spring semester to assess damages and generates requests for Sunset’s staff to fix. In addition, he said, Hood’s cleaning staff will steam clean carpets on the same cycle.

Tyler Fiske, Anderson’s former roommate, said considering the state of the apartment he arrived to, he does not believe they clean the apartments at all.

            “When you try to live in the apartment, they tell you to leave the apartment for two weeks to clean, but that’s obviously not true,” Fiske said. “We had to do four to five hours of cleaning before the apartment even looked decent. The tubs were absolutely disgusting, the walls were dirty, and there were holes everywhere.”

            “It’s very obvious that there have been previous owners that were also college students,” current Sunset resident Maeve Goldstein said. Goldstein said there are noticeable stains in her carpet as well as a hole in her bathroom door.

Luhman, said that the college encourages residents to tell Sunset or Hood when there is a problem; however, he says that students have a tendency to not voice their complaints.

“Sometimes they just hold on those [complaints] and don’t let us know,” Luhman said. “Maybe it’s upsetting them on some level, but if they don’t tell me I can’t help them.”

Luhman said the only types of complaints that Residence Life gets frequently concerning Sunset are noise complaints from non-student residents forwarded to them by Sunset’s management.

While students had complaints about upkeep, they voiced few concerns about maintenance staff and said, generally, maintenance staff was reliable when responding to work orders.

Adam Bir and Herman Cohee, roommates at Sunset, feel the upkeep and cleanliness of the apartments is not satisfactory, but said that one of their biggest complaints is that Sunset does not have a recycling program. Bir said he and his roommates will wait until the amount of recycling they have becomes too much to hold on to and then drive it to a recycle dumpster outside of the complex.

Goldstein said that the absence of a recycling program at Sunset makes it difficult for them to get rid of plastics, glass, and paper without throwing them out.

“We try to reduce our waste, but there’s nothing we can really do about not having recycling here,” she said. Her and her roommates, if they can, will accrue recyclables until they can go home for a break, she said.

Despite their grievances, most residents said overall their living arrangements were satisfactory. Many said they appreciate the convenience of being close to Hood without having to live in the disruptively loud dormitories.

Anderson said that while Sunset is more expensive than other off-campus housing he might find, the convenience of being close to school along with paid utilities makes it a “fair deal”.

Luhman said that Hood has plans for its off-campus housing program at Sunset. If it is approved in the budget, Luhman says the apartments will be entirely refurnished over the summer including new bedroom sets and common room furniture.