City Park Apartments

I just signed a lease here for the 2016 – 2017 school year. While the apartments themselves are standard for the cheaper end of options here (about 600 for a shared room and 900 for a single, decent hardwood floors, AC, etc.), my experience with the management so far has honestly been atrocious. I was taking over a friend’s lease, and as such I had a few questions about the facilities themselves.
The manager, Laura Huang, was perhaps one of the most unpleasant women I have ever encountered. Likely knowing that I had already committed to a lease, she was consistently rude and dismissive as I asked about floor plans and security deposits, refusing to answer even simple questions (when I asked about room sizes for the room I was leasing into, she claimed that the sheet holding the floor plans had been «lost», while making no effort to look for it). She demanded a security deposit, which is normal the case of a new lease, but in this case refused to return my friend’s (who’s lease I am taking) deposit while simultaneously requiring my deposit (though the lease transfer is scheduled for august). When I questioned her on this, Laura lost her temper COMPLETELY, yelling that it was none of my business where my money was going. Honestly would have walked out right then if not for my other roommates sitting and waiting patiently for me to finish signing. However, if Laura treats all potential tenants like she did with me I can’t imagine how city park manages to stay afloat. Likely she’s used to taking advantage of college kids who don’t know any better about their renter’s rights.
In Summary– decent apartment, absolutely god awful management.

That rating from Ryan Z made me laugh — yes, this place actually does deserve its* bad ratings, unless you have absolutely no taste, self respect, or cleanliness. If I could give this place no stars, I totally would. City Park Apartments is disgusting, run down, and in an extremely dangerous area of USC. Most residents that live here seem to be international students. Also, this was the place and location a few years ago that a USC student was murdered.
The location is right next to Vermont Avenue — a location where USC advises students to stay away from. Homeless people and smokers sit outside of the complex, near both entrances — I’ve had to call DPS (campus security) several times for this reason. You’re also right next to a liquor store where I kid you not, at least twice a week police cars are swarming and arresting people.
As for the apartment complex… disgusting. Gross. I honestly think you will develop a disease or condition living here. I lived here last spring and this past fall but decided to finally move out since it is not worth it just to save a couple hundred dollars. Last semester, pigeons were somehow getting into the apartment complex and roaming the hallways, pooping everywhere. I will upload a photo to confirm this. Laura, the manager, ignored emails regarding this.
Our apartment had so many issues and I had to send Laura over thirty emails last semester. We had cockroaches throughout the kitchen, dirty DIRTY carpet, water started leaking from our bathroom ceiling (which took a month for her to fix), our refrigerator broke at one point, water started leaking from the LIVING ROOM, blinds were missing, our balcony started to cave in, the list. Goes. On.
Parking — $ 900 per semester. NOT included in rent. Also, street cleaning every Tuesday and Wednesday from 8 – 11 AM — which makes parking even more difficult.
You can only pick up your packages at certain hours, which they keep changing. Only Monday-​Friday until 5 PM.
There’s a washing machine room — I didn’t even bother doing my laundry there. The washing machine and dryer eat your quarters, which Laura will refuse to reimburse at $ 2 a load.
LAURA IS LITERALLY THE WORST MANAGER. Every week she pulls up in a different luxury car and sits in her office watching TV or doing stretches on her desk — I kid you not. She is extremely rude and barely speaks English — hence why most of the tenants are international Chinese students. Laura will ignore your apartment repair requests until you send her about ten emails and finally come into the office yourself. You have no class and no respect or care for any of your tenants, Laura. It’s unfortunate that USC students need to deal with someone like you while attending such a high ranked institution.
City Parks is a grimy and gross place to live — if you’re that desperate to save $ 100 compared to other apartment complexes elsewhere near campus, go ahead. Also Ryan Z, the rent is actually $ 600 per person for a double, two bedroom apartment.

Pretty grimy and could use a lot of maintenance.
I live here, but I came here for a friend’s kickback and went outside to chill on the balcony and there was a patch on the side that seemed like unstable wood/​paper. I placed my foot on the spot and it seemed very fragile and someone could easily fall through. Just so you know, we were on the 3^rd floor and it’s pretty high up. That could’ve been extremely dangerous!!! If I didn’t test that small spot, I could have fallen through and would’ve sued the hell out of this place (if I were to make it out alive of course…).
Now onto my unit, which is on the first floor nearest Vermont and it literally feels like I live at LAX. SOOO much urban noise! It’s horrible. Me and my roommate used to get woken up by the trash truck that comes every Monday 5am, but we got used to it. There are also a lot of cars going by Vermont since it’s a major street, and many sirens going off during the week.
My next complaint has to do with the package service. You’re only allowed to get packages Mon-​Fri 5:30 — 8:30 and if you don’t pick up your package within 7 business days, they send it back.
I guess it’s kinda cheap so it’s not ALL that bad… but they did raise rent by $ 50 this year. I used to live at Lorenzo and I thought that was bad, but CP is a whole nother story.

This place does not deserve it’s bad ratings. I pay 300ish rent for a shared bedroom we can fit two full sized beds and desks. There’s a couple small problems, like carpet is kinda dirty, and the paint is kinda cheap but nothing major. I like how close it is to USC, right next to the bike shop, mc barbers, and Ralph’s. I love the balcony, it’s CHILL. Parking is nice because it’s close and you could get street parking.

OK to live in, but only live here if you came to USC and you don’t have a car. For this price, you can have a much better apt in K town or other area. This apartment is much better than the nearby poor houses. It has the basics for you to live. But sometimes you really have to struggle. BTW, Lorenzo apt or gateway is a much better choice.
Pros: Workers fix the facilities very quickly after you report the problems. Super near to the campus.
Cons: The guy in the mail office sucks. He always has a face with small white eyes like you haven’t pay for the rent. Throw your mails onto the ground no matter what they are. And in the apt, you always know what your neighbors are doing. This is an old building and sounds just come through the wall so easily. Space is really narrow, not like they described in their website.

I live on the second floor, and the washing machines are NEVER WORKING! They ate my coins million times! Okay, besides that, they raised washing rate from 1.00 to 1.25. The first day I did the laundry after they raised the price, the machine ate my coins AGAIN! All five of them! In sum, poor environment, poor maintenance, poor management and incredibly high rent, so DON’T COME HERE!

I don’t go to USC… but this place definitely strikes me as ratch city … but I go to a college where we live in dorms for four years, so maybe I’m just not used to apartments. Anyways, the apartment complex building itself is quite large, but once you walk in it looks pretty grungy. No carpet, bare wall-​like floors… I can’t even describe just very grim looking, dim lights. The inside is alright. The apartment I crashed at was pretty sizable – split into two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a kitchen and decently sized living room, but the room itself definitely isn’t spectacular.
tldr; all in all, I probably wouldn’t live here if I had the choice

There is some traffic noise at night. And the curtain is not efficient for eliminating the light. So it is hard for you to take a nap in the noon. And there are some bugs in the kitchen. It is very gross and scary.
And when we moved out at August 1^st, they charged us one day late fee. But they did not told us one day before.

My 2 years in City Park was not a great or an awful experience. Location is really convenient, a nice 15-​min walk to campus’ center, and a few minutes to UV. The nicest thing is the rent covers pretty much all the expenses (utilities, parking, trash, repairmen); what’s in return, the management SUCKS. It usually takes about a week to get your stuffs fixed, and they provide no type of service for you except yelling in your face when you are confused about some bullshit policies that we college students barely pay attention to. They sometimes strangle you to whole lists of rules that you haven’t even heard of; I’ve experienced things like «Dump your own trash or we’re gonna CHARGE YOU» (Apparently they make residents to dump the trash that doesn’t fit into the trash room without making any type of announcement), «Renew your packing spot every year» (They almost tolled my car away). If they could be responsible and make some types of announcement, I’m sure there could be better result to those cases, but these managers really SUCKs sometimes. So be careful what managers you are getting.

A-​OK is defintely the exact words we need to describe City Park. A– Okaayyy…
I believe that for the price that you pay, this place is not as «shitty» as other people make it seem to be. I know people who live at much nicer places around SC and have to deal with as much shitty management as CP. Anywoo here goes my review!
The PROS:
I lived here in 2011 – 2012 at a 2 bedroom, sharing a room with another girl and paid 450. In 2012 – 2013, I live in a 3 bedroom unit, sharing a room with another girl for 500. I would say this is pretty cheap. The down side? Pretty small rooms, I have to use a bunk bed both years to fit 2 beds and 2 desks into a room. But the other room in my apartment was actually a lot bigger so they both fit all their stuff in. So just make sure you check out the rooms and get the measurements.
City Park covers a lot of utilities (gas, water, trash, internet) with the rent, you just have to pay for electricity. Again, I think this is another perk. Each apartment gets 2 free parking spots for a whole year and each extra spot is 600, so you can split this with the people in your apartment. They have plenty of room in their garage too! So if they make you tandem park with your roommie, just exchange spare keys to make life easier! Honestly parking in the garage and not have to worry about moving my car for street sweeping is pretty awesome!
SO close to campus, on my lazy days: I can wake up 15 minutes before class, brush my teeth and biked to school without being late. I’ve timed myself biking there and it only take 7 – 8 minutes to Taper !!! Walking… maybe 15? Very very convenient! It is super close to Lyon’s center too, for you gym junkies!
The CONS:
The year before, my apartment got. BED BUGS… Well it was because my roommate had the brilliant idea of taking in a strange couch in the hallway of CP… DONT DO THAT… EVER! Apparently they have had many other beg bugs problems in the past too… Anywoo they paid for our terminator and the whole nine yards so that was nice… NAH, having bed bugs SUCKSSSS! Dealing with management is going to be a big pain in the butt. This year they forgot to pay our gas bill and our gas got shut down for a few days. They took care of that after a few days… Laura is the kinda nicer manager, Mercedez is the one who forgot to take care of our gas bill… They are your typical asian manager with not much customer service etiquettes…
But oh well, bottom line is that… you get what you pay for!

Biggest negative: Most of the rooms get ZERO SUNLIGHT. The rooms all face inwards and so there’s no sunlight :((And you can hear anything going on and you also won’t know where it’s coming from.
So negatives: it’s loud, no sun. The younger lady in the office, mercedes? SUPER RUDE. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to be nice and smile and not be curt and rude.
I pay $ 900 for my own room in a three bedroom apartment.
Parking is $ 300 for the whole year (although it’s cheap pretty sure they advertised it to be cheaper initially). You have to double park so that’s really rough to deal with.
Location: Takes maybe 15 minutes to get to Jefferson and McClintock.
It’s okay. It’s not as «shitty» as everyone calls it– pretty clean (in the apartment) and what not, but there’s definitely better places you could live for the same price (ellendale, menlo).

If there was a way to give negative stars to this apartment complex, I really would. Do not live here. I think it’s worth the efforts of walking a little bit further from other apts in the USC area than to live here. The management is the most unorganized and irresponsible people I have ever encountered in my life. I don’t if it’s cause English is not their first language, but they try every way to steal money from you and rip you off (not exaggerating).
Every person you ask who has lived in City Park has always had a negative experience. Whether it be the roaches, stench, management problems, mail getting lost, plumbing issues, electricity issues… the list goes on and on. Sadly, because we are poor college students, we choose to live in this horrendous dump and pay decent amount of rent for an apt that is walking distance from USC. If you have the money and have the efforts to live somewhere else that’s a little bit further (like Ellendale), I advise you to do so. CITY PARK IS THE WORST PLACE TO LIVE AT.

I renewed my lease for City Park and retrospectively, it really wasn’t too bad of an experience. Here are some things I would say about City Park:
1. Yes, it’s also called «Shitty Park» and «Shady Park.» Yes, there are reasons for that.
2. The management isn’t as bad as people make them out to be – you get what you pay for; cheap rent for limited services: work order takes a few days to be processed and the mailroom only opens Mondays-​Friday 8PM — 10PM.
3. There’s no annoying landlord who will knock on your door if you are too loud — this is a perk, in my opinion.
4. The rent is cheap and the place is relatively safe.
5. It’s a great place to live if you want to live with USC kids. I don’t regret my decision to live here.

Okay I’ve lived here a year and wanted to write a review because CP is pretty good. Honestly, its cheap. But the manager takes care of you. When i lived on the first floor in a 3 bedroom last year (those are in the center of the building) I got shoddy signal, and I have Verizon. I could barely text, and don’t even try calling. My dishwasher never worked properly. BUT when the apartment flooded due to the insane amount of rain last christmas and the fact that the too-​small drain was right outside our patio, they took care of us. We had fans to dry the carpet and they replaced the undercarpet before the vast majority of my roomies got back from vacation. Whenever we had a problem, they came and fixed it in a couple days, usually same day. It’s a pretty quiet complex, not too many parties or douchebags living here. It’s not furnished, but it’s spacious for the price. I’ll update this review after I finish my second year here in July. (this year they decided to include cable and internet in rent which is awesomeeeeee)

There are three reasons why I chose to live at City Park (and the only three reasons why ANYONE should choose to live at City Park):
1. With rent costing about $ 450/​person to share a room, it’s probably one of the cheapest housing options at USC
2. It’s fairly close to USC campus, with a 5-​minute walk to the closest campus gates.
3. It’s a decently sized complex, which allows large groups of people to move in together. In my case, about 90% of my closest college friends all moved in here, so it only made sense that I lived here as well.
And now for some horror story fun time!
— My apartment sophomore year was the first door by the stairwell. One day, a bum from the street made it into the building and smashed his way through our door. Luckily, my roommate’s boyfriend was home at the time, and at the site of him, the bum ran away. Our door handle was left in shreds. I don’t even want to think what would have been stolen had no one been home that day. Lesson learned: DON’T LIVE BY AN EXIT DOOR.
— One night at 6pm I heard a girl scream for help outside in the alleyway. My roommate saw her get pushed into a car and driven away. Yes, those alleys are shady, which is why they have been nicknamed the «Rape Alleys.» NEVER EVER try and walk back to your apartment through one of them. Even in broad daylight, I have known people who were mugged at gunpoint.
— Living in one of the courtyards, you tend to hear a lot of uh… sex noises. You can also see into a lot of people’s windows. One day, my apartment mates and I saw a couple dry humping each other through an open window. ROFLcopter. Ok, this is not so much a horror story as just flat out hilarious.
— City Park hired a local company to repaint the building exterior/​courtyard walls. Unfortunately, City Park only cares about getting something done as cheaply as possible, making tons of sacrifices in terms of quality. The painters were sloppy and left pieces of their equipment on the street. My friend accidentally drove over one of these pieces and f’ed up the bottom of his car. The scaffolding in the courtyard broke apart at one point and literally SMASHED into my bedroom window. Thank god no one was sitting at my roommate’s desk, or else some serious injuries could have occurred. Even worse, the company tried to deny that it happened when we confronted them about it.
CIty Park is suitable for college life, but once you are graduated and have a job, there is NO reason to continue living here. Anywhere is an upgrade. Please spend some money and drastically improve the quality of your life.
PS. After rereading this review, I’ve realized that I am actually living by an exit door at my current place o_​O. It’s a much better complex though, so fingers crossed for no repeated incidents!

So I’ve lived here for the past two years (2007 – 2009) while attending USC, and I know every apartment complex has its Pros and Cons, but for City Park, the cons definitely outweigh the pros.
Affectionatly known as «Shitty Park» by many students, this nickname does hold some credibility. First and foremost has to be the overall cleanliness of the place, which it isn’t. You’ll find trash left along the hallways instead of in the trash chute and/​or room, many times the garage has trash just flying around, and the general gist of things is that «you live in a not-​so-​clean neighborhood, why should this apartment be any different». It is true that the tenants have something to do with this, but also the management as well. When the trash chutes get full, what are we supposed to do?
As far as the actual apartments go, they’re okay. Rooms are sized fairly well, with two people per room being comfortable but not claustrophobic. Most apartment issues lie in the fact that there are random electrical switches for God knows what outlet it controls, electrical overloads on some wires, leading to lights not working while something is plug in to a specific socket, and the fact that the place is never going to be clean. No, they won’t change your carpet, no they won’t clean the outside of your windows, yes everyone just comes to accept it. Another thing everyone just accepts is the thinness of the walls. If there’s a party less that 2 apartments away from you, you’ll hear it. If you’re studying for a final and some chick is screaming in ecstasy next door, good luck. And no matter where you’ll stay, you’ll be plagued by everyone’s sub-​woofer and the bass.
Which brings me to the biggest problem of City Park, the management. When I stayed here the manager was Laura and she had a couple of assistants. To get anything done (such as a work order for a broken toilet) you would need to write your name down on the work order list, then nag and hound Laura for a week. Maybe then, and just maybe, she’ll send someone up to fix your problem. I found it much easier just to talk to the janitorial staff myself and ask for them to fix it.
Some miscillaneous stuff that might not happen to you but did to me are things like:
— the management decided to remodel our kitchen tops (a good thing) to granite ones. The downside was that we didn’t have a kitchen for 2 months.
— the AC was dripping water in our apartment, cause a buildup of mildew/​fungus, a problem that took almost a month to fix.
— Interacting with the management is extremely troublesome. Very little English is spoken, there is a lot of bickering, and mostly everything they say is just talk. Hence, you have to always go back and repeat yourself.
— I had bedbugs in my room for 2 weeks. They didn’t send someone to treat it for another 2 weeks. I essentially moved out of my apartment for 3 months while they treated the problem. Specifically, this was not a single case but quite rampant throughout the building. As of April 2009, they have had multiple inspections throughout the building for bedbugs as well as constant treating.
Overall, if you don’t have a car and you want to keep the rent to a minimum, sure I could suggest City Park. When I had it a 2 bedroom apartment was $ 1820 a month. Grab a couple roommates and you can see how cheap that can get. But in all honesty, I suggest you try every other option before coming here.
P. S. Don’t forget to pay your rent on time. There’s absolutely NO grace period and it’s $ 50 bucks extra every day it’s late.
Pros:
— Walking distance to USC’s campus
— USC Tram stops at building
Cons:
— Cleanliness of the place
— Thin walls
— Parking rules aren’t heavily enforced
— Management is condescending, rude, and incompetent