Newton Village Apartments

Pros: large, near Route 80. Cons: Loud, dirty, poorly maintained, Waldron Management is at best unenthusiastic about enforcing conditions of lease.

My two-bedroom apartment has a terrible paint job that barely masks the poorly filled holes and obvious dark blue that the last tenant painted it. In addition, paint is splattered all over the fake wood molding and the tape used to protect the edges of the ceiling has been painted over. When I moved in the cupboards in the kitchen were separating from the wall and burned-out bulbs in the hall lights go without replacement for months. There are dead cars in the lot trash in the bushes. The buildings have mice.

The worst problem has been the lack of interest that the management has in enforcing the conditions of the lease, especially when it comes to loud neighbors. The on-site managers and main office will both make it abundantly clear that any noise problem in your building is really your problem and not theirs. After finally resorting to calling the police one night after being awakened at 1:30 a.m., I was chastised by the management because the loud tenant was upset about the police visit. Waldron's solution is to suggest that the tenant who complains move to a different apartment, at the tenant's expense, with no guarantee that other neighbors will be any quieter.

If you can afford to live elsewhere, do it.