USC students say some off-campus apartments fail to deliver on promises

Sparkling resort-style pools. Fitness centers with 24-hour access and state-of-the-art equipment. Fully renovated apartments outfitted with updated appliances.

These are features that apartment complexes advertise to University of South Carolina students.

But in reality, residents sometimes are met with inaccessible amenities, mold in their apartments and crime outside their doors.

Erin Danforth was in search of an inexpensive apartment for the upcoming school year and chose Alight Columbia in Cayce after researching the complex’s features and amenities.

“The advertisements from Alight themselves, it’s always going to be like, ‘Awesome community and awesome amenities. All this cool stuff. Things are really great,’” Danforth said. “We moved here because it was cheaper rent. And it looked nicer.”

But after six months of living there, she has a much different perspective: “I think Alight sucks.”

‘The lack of security has turned my life upside down’

The evening of Sept. 9 was not the first time Danforth heard gunshots while in her apartment.

She had just returned home from her classes and was crossing in front of her parked car to get her backpack from the passenger side. She couldn’t tell how far away the gunshots were, but she remembers pausing long enough to see a car speeding toward her through the parking lot, tires screeching against the asphalt.

Danforth said the car drove up onto the grass in front of the apartment building, hitting the parked cars in its path, on course to collide with the building as well. Then, at the last second, she said the car turned and hit her.

“So, I was crushed between his car and my own car,” Danforth said. “And that was because (the driver) was shot in the head.”

The driver of the car was later identified as 22-year-old Jalen Latrell Allen, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher told WIS News 10. According to Fisher and WIS, Allen was shot multiple times and later died from his injuries.

The Cayce Police Department declined to provide any additional details to Carolina News & Reporter, citing the ongoing investigation.

Danforth had severe bruising and a broken leg that has rendered her unable to work her job at a daycare center or attend classes in early childhood education at USC.

“I’m grateful that I didn’t die because I know I could have, for sure,” Danforth said. “I’m lucky that I just got out with one broken leg.”

The shooter at Alight has not been identified, but Cayce police told WIS they are planning to make arrests and have identified multiple suspects.

Danforth blames the lack of answers on Alight’s lack of security cameras.

“I know most apartment complexes don’t have cameras, but I feel like they should,” she said. “Because if this one did, we might have caught the shooter.”

Alight since has been rebranded as The Radley. A reporter with Carolina News & Reporter emailed questions to the new management team, Campus Advantage, which has not responded, despite multiple follow-up emails.

Residents of other student housing locations have witnessed criminal activity at their apartment complexes, too. Former Cayce Cove resident Jordan Bumgarner said police cars were frequently seen “flying” through the apartment complex with sirens on, with no communication from management to residents as to why they were there.

“(Management) would never tell us why, but we usually always figured it out later on,” Bumgarner said. “One time somebody had escaped from somewhere, and he ran into our apartment complex. We didn’t have our door locked or anything because we didn’t know what was going on, and there was a fugitive out in our complex.”

‘Why do I keep having to beg you guys to fix stuff for us?’

Alight’s website advertises renovated apartments with full kitchens equipped with new appliances and living rooms with a TV on the wall.

But Danforth and her roommate, Katie Sauve, said Alight has failed multiple times to meet expectations – including providing a fully intact wall.

Within their first month of living there, Sauve and Danforth contacted maintenance after noticing mold growing in their bathroom, Sauve said.

“We were really scared that it was gonna turn into black mold, that it was gonna get us sick and our cats sick,” Sauve said. “So, we told them that we had mold. And they were like, ‘OK, we’ll fix it.’ A week or two goes by. Nothing else. Nobody’s come.”

Sauve said it took about a month of emailing maintenance before any action was taken. At that point, the mold had grown so much that when maintenance did arrive, they had to remove part of the walls and ceiling in the bathroom, she said.

“We could see into the ceiling,” Danforth said. “My cat would go up in the ceiling, and we could see down into the apartment below us.”

The incomplete maintenance work left Sauve and Danforth without lights in most of their apartment, limiting their electricity access to just a few outlets. And getting maintenance to replace the walls was a whole new obstacle.

“It took them a month and a half, maybe just a little bit more, to put our walls back,” Sauve said. “And that was with us constantly calling and emailing and going, ‘Hey, we don’t have walls.’”

Sauve and Danforth’s apartment has been plagued with maintenance issues besides the mold, they said. The TV that came with the apartment has not been working since their arrival in May, and their stove was inoperable for two months, they said. They have been without lights in their kitchen after water from the apartment above leaked through the ceiling and into their overhead light. Most recently, they’ve been unable to do laundry since their dryer broke, Danforth said.

The roommates were told a maintenance worker would come on a set day, but that didn’t happen.

“Nobody came,” Danforth said.

Sauve said she emailed maintenance after no one showed up but didn’t receive a response.

“I was like, ‘Hey, what happened to that? Why do I keep having to beg you guys to come fix stuff for us?’” Sauve added. “I think my messages are potentially being sent to a junk folder or something.”

‘Not just convenience’

Communication issues extend beyond maintenance at student apartment complexes.

Residents also have had negative experiences with apartment complexes’ management as well.

Last summer, 21 Oaks resident Charlie Buren renewed his apartment lease, but received a call from management questioning why his belongings were still in his Columbia apartment near USC’s football stadium. After explaining that he had renewed his lease, management said they would store the items in his closet.

But when Buren returned to the apartment, he said most of his items had been thrown away.

Cornelius Alexander, a leasing and marketing manager at 21 Oaks, said he couldn’t respond to Buren’s situation because management has changed.

He said the new management team tries to address complaints by creating a dialogue between residents and staff to get to the root of an issue.

“Let’s say someone has said, ‘Hey, the management team sucks there,’” he said. “At that point, then we would just reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, is there anything that we could do better as a management staff to ensure that your stay here is a lot more comfortable?’”

In addition to issues with maintenance and management, some apartment residents have been unable to access the amenities their complexes advertised to them.

Jordan Bumgarner, a former resident of Cayce Cove, said she paid a little over $640 per month, but the pool and hot tub were usually out of use while she was living there.

“But they would drain it and fill it up … to make it look clean when they had a showing for people to come in,” Bumgarner said.

While Sauve and Danforth had seen bad reviews of Alight online before they chose to lease there, they didn’t know just how negative their experiences would be.

“We saw that there were some fairly bad reviews about management and stuff, but we’re thinking like, ‘Oh, can’t be that bad,’” Danforth said. “Like, I’m not expecting to get hit by a car.”

However, some students, including Buren, consider the decline in apartment quality to be the price they pay for more affordable housing. Buren said he pays around $670 monthly at 21 Oaks.

“It’s not really cheap. … But it’s relatively cheap for apartments,” Buren said.

Danforth pays about $560 monthly at Alight, not including utilities. She said the cheaper rent has come at a steep cost though.

“Whenever we first were dealing with the bad communication, it’s like, ‘OK, I guess that’s what you get when you try to go cheaper,’” she said. “But in the past month, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is your safety that you’re compromising for money, not just convenience.’”