maintenance

I love the pool but Equity Residential is awful

I originally moved to 3003 Van Ness for the pool. It’s the main reason why I stay here. The location also is great — about a two minute walk to the Metro. The apartments are large and have hardwood floors.

However, the corporation that owns and manages the building, Equity Residential, is awful. It sells itself as a high-end provider of luxury apartments, but at 3003 it has run the building down and taken advantage of residents. This seems to be a company strategy because it has gone on since almost the beginning that Equity took over.

Equity was implicated in the rent “concession” scam — a way to circumvent rent control and overcharge tenants. The tenants association fought the company for years over this practice and it even got the DC Attorney General involved.

Maintenance problems

Maintenance on the building has all sorts of problems. Maintenance in our units has plenty of problems too, including the time to work on an issue is not soon. For example, one thing was an electrical problem in a power switch and rather than fixing it they replaced the expensive bulbs I bought and never came back. It was to be a temporary fix and was more than a year before I put them back in the sockets as the replacement bulbs caused heat in the room.

A big thing right now is they do not want to give us our packages. Pretty much everyone is working from home right now. Our companies expect us to be able to get stuff here as they FedEx something in a hurry and that is wrong. Even if we get a message to pick up our package they will not give us the package. I had a fast FedEx the next day so my spouse could do a COVID test and they would not give it to us.

This building at one point called this a good place. Does it say anything that even they realized they had to take that sign down?

Initially pleased -- but not now

I moved in 4 years ago and was initially pleased but I am not now. We have no security; broken external doors mean that anyone can enter from the street; and we have had stray people sleeping in the conference room.

There are frequent substantial water leaks in apartments. My neighbors moved out temporarily due to a huge leak. And management never fixed the apartment properly, leaving mold in the apartment until the tenants moved out when their lease ended.

I had rats living under the hood of my Prius. The rats like the wire material. Fortunately, I found out what was happening before the wires were eaten through but I had to pay to repair and fumigate the car.

The pool is great; the location is great. But don't move in.

Resident of several years

I would not recommend living here to anyone

I moved into 3003 Van Ness in 2018 and was initially pleased - convenient location, decent amenities, and solid square footage for the price. However, my opinion of both the building itself and management specifically has gradually changed over the course of my time here (drastically so within the last year and a half).

From frequently broken washing machines (and entire laundry rooms rendered unusable as a result of flooding, sometimes on a weekly basis), to warped flooring (with replacements delayed, and, in the case of my own apartment, by the installation team deciding not to show up on the scheduled replacement date), to major instances of police activity (multiple domestic incidents, an armed intruder requiring no less than 20 police officers equipped with riot gear, and an instance of a resident being stabbed by another intruder, also requiring significant police presence), habitability and safety are now my foremost concerns.