BOYCOTT PANORAMIC INTERESTS

THERE IS STILL A FUCKING LEAK IN MY FUCKING ROOM.

It’s pouring. Two maintenence guys just came in and checked the corner. They pried up the carpet in the SW corner of the room, where the major leak was in december 2002–it was all good. Then they pried up up the carpet in the SE corner of the room by the window–and the fucking carpet pad was wet. WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?! So they cut out the wet parts of the pad and put a bunch of layers of new pad underneath the carpet, to soak up the wetness. Again, WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!?! And you know it’s not coming in through the window, because the wall under the window isn’t wet, and the top of the carpet isn’t wet–so it’s coming in where the wall meets the cement floor. Again.

FUCKING PANORAMIC INTERESTS. I’m going to acquaint myself with how to file class-action suits.

For those of you who don’t know, here is a brief synopsis of the story: in october/november of 2002, there were a bunch of rainstorms. The room started smelling like shit. Joan found a spot of mold on the wall. We noticed gradually that the floor under her bed was wet. Finally we put mold, a wet floor, and rainstorms together and realized we had a massive building leak on our hands. We didn’t even have the worst of it–some other apartments completely flooded; a maintenence guy punched a tiny hole in a wall of someone’s closet and water gushed out and drenched everything; etc, etc. In December, my room was not live-in-able. It seriously smelled so bad that I now associate Glade carpet deodorizer with nausea. Most of the carpet in the room was cut away and all our stuff was strewn about the apartment hallway. I was home all break and Joan lived in the living room. Disgusting. So, Panoramic Interests hired a company to fix it. They shrinkwrapped this side of the building in scaffolding and plastic so that rainwater wouldn’t continue flooding the building. They waited until the summer to begin work. We had to deal with construction noise all summer (but they were decent enough to wait until after Berkeley finals to begin). That’s almost a year of no light in my room. They finally took down the scaffolding in October 2003. And now there are problems again. HA!

As far as I know, none of the other PI buildings (Berkeleyan, ARTech, that one that houses the french restaurant Liason, etc) have had major problems like this. They did, after all, rush like mad to finish this building. It’s partly my own fault–I should have moved out in August.

4 comments

    1. Re: that sucks.

      At least you don’t have a $1200/month 1 bedroom apartment with asbestos ceilings, leaking windows, thin walls, and a filthy basement laundry room. I had Reddy Realty to thank for that, no offense to .

      1. Re: that sucks.

        I guess housing sucks everywhere (lisa and steve had mold too). But PI buildings are brand new. And they’re hailed by newspapers and the mayor (at least they were in 2001) as the bringers of a beautiful new Berkeley. Oh glorious innovative PI with brand-new fancy multi-use buildings, enabling small-businesses and residents to share space! So that’s why I’m annoyed I guess.

  1. Evan and I had some maintenance problems at the ArTech (no one would answer our maintenance requests after a month) but after Evan sent a lovely lil e-mail directly to Mr. Patrick Kennedy they cleaned up their act pretty quick…

    Hopefully your apt gets better. Try mailing Mr. Kennedy maybe?

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