Although situated in a prime location for Washington University off-campus residence, many Quadrangle Housing apartments are almost 100 years old and in need of renovation and maintenance repairs.
Receiving significantly more maintenance requests than Residential Life housing, Quadrangle Housing will enact a new policy on April 1 stating that all maintenance requests will be addressed within 72 hours.
“We think the residents that we have deserve that kind of service. We want to make sure we address it to make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks,” said Ralph Thaman, executive vice president and general manager of Quadrangle.
Established by the University, Quadrangle Housing is a non-profit corporation that owns and manages off-campus apartments for student and faculty housing. Quadrangle is independent of Residential Life and its residents receive no Residential Life services.
Quadrangle owns over 1,200 apartment units. With this many residents, Thaman said that there will be some who are not satisfied with the maintenance service included in their rent.
Junior Katie Seidler said that when her oven in her Quadrangle apartment on Pershing Avenue needed repair, it was fixed in a timely fashion.
“When I moved in I did actually ask about the age of the appliances and was told that they were old, but I was ensured that maintenance was covered and they would take care of everything,” said Seidler. “They did it in a very timely fashion.”
Seidler, however, said that she had trouble after she requested maintenance for a larger project, the broken pilot of her water heater.
“Maintenance is really the thing that I would complain about, and the quality of work is really not the issue; it’s about the follow-through,” said Seidler. “The issue is communication in terms of follow-through. Sometimes there are projects that aren’t just a one-shot deal. You have to keep pestering them.”
Junior Stephen Hmiel, who lives in a different building on Pershing Avenue said that he has experienced similar maintenance issues. He had been missing a window in his apartment since he moved in mid-August.
He said that he placed numerous maintenance requests and encountered obstacles until maintenance removed a window from an unoccupied apartment two floors above and installed it in his apartment in the beginning of February.
Hmiel also had an issue over winter break when the building lock of his front door broke.
“It took them over a week to fix that, which I thought was a glaring error since it was a security issue,” he said.
Despite these instances, the most recent survey of Quadrangle Housing residents stated that none of the participants cited any current or ongoing maintenance problems.
Thaman said that because of the age of the apartments, maintenance issues are expected.
“We have more maintenance calls than you would expect because of the older buildings,” said Thaman. “It certainly is different than Residential Life. Residential Life is primarily in the South 40 which is basically new buildings.”
According to Thaman, a customer service area receives the maintenance calls for the Quadrangle Housing residents and determines whether they are emergencies. If not, a work order is written and maintenance takes the order.
“A lot of it has to do how important and how critical the work order is,” said Thaman. “We always take care of emergencies immediately.”
The new 72-hour policy, which will be implemented on April 1, will attempt to address and fix all problems within the time frame. If it is not possible to fix the issue within 72 hours, Quadrangle will inform the resident of the problem and give them a schedule of when it will be fixed.
While Hmiel said he is unsure if the corporation will be able to adhere to this policy, he hopes that communication within maintenance improves.
“Really as a whole the company is grossly inefficient and they need to get their act together because it’s difficult being angry at nice people,” said Hmiel.
Seidler said that despite her experience, she still enjoyed living in Quadrangle because of her large apartment and its proximity to campus.
“It’s great to be off campus but still be that close. The apartments themselves are really nice. They are really beautiful apartments,” she said.
Thaman said Quadrangle is constantly renovating and improving its buildings.
“We provide an excellent service to students and we really like when students live with us and choose us as our housing options,” said Thaman. “Anything we can do to make the student life better, we will do.”