Tenant Reviews for 3335 S FIGUEROA ST

It has been 7 months since I moved out, but I still don't get my deposit (roughly 2400$). If you don't contact the staff, they will never give you any feedback!!!!! Please be careful if you are considering renting a apartment in University Gateway.

Some of their staffs are not responsible at all. Not sure how they are hired and keeping their jobs. If gateway is in another location they won't get any residents with this rental price and horrible service. Lazy + irresponsible staffs. They only care about money and I guarantee they won't contact you or fix any issues even though they reply all messages post here.

Terrible and overpriced. It takes them more than a week to respond to a work order and it's flooding in my apartment. It happened more than one time. Sometimes they won't even answer the phone, and their office is closed now.

Please stay away from this apartment. It seems that the management is only concerned about one thing , Money!. During the Covid time, not only did we never hear from the apartment management, they ignored us when we try to contact them. While Lorenzo offered to Delay rent until next year, Gateway never called us back, no penny of discount knowing kids cannot return to their apartment. They just keep on charging and charging, talking about citizenship. When the university reached out to make arrangement, they also did not cooperate, how horrific!

Poor experience. The only thing that Gateway has going for it is its location. University Gateway will charge you for anything that it can and almost never offers a refund due to extenuating circumstances. For instance, I was charged for a missing key; however, I had moved out due to COVID-19 and had not received any notice that I had to return my plastic keycard (or face a $100 charge). Additionally, I added a parking pass onto my lease about a month in. Despite this, after having the parking pass for only two months and realizing I didn't need it anymore, they said that I couldn't remove the pass as it was signed onto my lease (could add it easily, but could not take it off). Altogether, I believe that University Gateway is a poor living situation that cares little for its residents and will find any way to make more money. If you live here, I highly recommend taking intensive photos of your apartment before you move out so that you can try to dispute the various charges they will inevitably bring up.

University Gateway became my second home as a USC transfer student. Coming from a small town and moving to the heart of LA wasn't easy. It truly was a cultural shock. Nevertheless, the Gateway staff really did welcome me with their unique and bubbly personalities. The resident director, Shanynn was one of the first staff members I connected with back in 2016. She was always there for me whether it was about Gateway or just being there to listen. I graduated from USC in 2018 and to this day I still keep in touch with her. I am heartbroken that she was let go. Shanynn was one of the most favorites amongst students and parents. She made us laugh, made us put a smile on before we walked into a stressful week of midterms, to making me her homemade Mac n cheese. Shanynn has a way to communicate and I do not regret signing my lease at Gateway. Thank you Shanynn and staff members for making my undergraduate housing experience memorable.

Everything looks good when you live there, but once you move out, it takes forever to get back your deposit, which is nearly two-month rent, and they do not even reply to your email. If you are interested in this apartment, better prepare that it would take more than 2 months to received your receipt.

Gateway is expensive and has a lot of issues. The staff are friendly but stuff rarely gets done around here. Whenever my friends ask me how gateway is I say its the best of the worst. Don't live here if you have ANY OTHER option. I certainly didn't.

To put it simply, choosing to live at University Gateway was one of the greatest mistakes of my life. This place is TERRIBLE. Where should I begin? It has literally been nothing but stress and frustration from the beginning and I wish I had never renewed and looked for something elsewhere. On their billboards and advertisements, they literally tout, "Location, location, location!" Do you know why? This is because that is literally the ONLY thing that this apartment has going for it. It is at the corner of Jefferson and Figueroa, which is right across the street from the University of Southern California. It really is a great location for students! As for everything else about this complex? Not. Worth. It. At. All. Don't fall for the location trap. Find a house with friends or live in a different apartment complex somewhere else! This place is seriously terrible in every way. Shall I share? Let's dive in: When you sign the lease, you go on a lovely tour and see a furnished model room and everything seems to be great! Everyone's friendly and helpful and the signing process seems easy enough! That's where the fun ends. Once you've signed with them, you're locked in for at least a year and become ALLLLL theirs, and they stop caring in the SLIGHTEST. Do you know what happened after we signed our lease? We got no communication from anyone. Over the summer, we frequently asked for updates on move-in, and no one over either phone or email would respond to us. They FINALLY sent out an automated email to all new residents literally a week before move in day, notifying us of the day we can move in and who we would be living with. They STILL will not answer any questions if you attempt to contact them. Another thing: The move in date is literally in MID AUGUST. Think the rent that month is less? WRONG. They charge the same amount every month - even though you move out late July and move in mid August. SHADY, SCAM. Once moved in, we realized just how much this place cuts corners. The walls and doors are paper thin. Be careful opening your door. Our first room, the door literally fell off of its hinges just from normal use. In another room later on, the door literally buckled just from us trying to open it one time. The material here is THE CHEAPEST of the cheapest, no doubt about it. Also, do you like lights and/or good natural lighting? Don't expect any of that here. If you have a room facing one of the courtyards, expect it to be as dark as a dungeon most of the day. Think you can compensate with artificial lighting? WRONG. There's literally no lights inside the bedrooms or living room. Just the kitchen and the bathrooms. That's it. Want to air out the bathroom after a shower? Sorry, out of luck. There's no fan! Want a comfortable bed? Sorry, the mattresses on these beds are literally paper thin! The "furnishings" here are absolutely bare minimum and literally absolute crap in quality. You'd be better off picking up some used furniture on Craigslist or going to Walmart then using the "furniture" that they have in here! As for the management, they are awful. They are lazy and never responsive to inquiries from residents. It was even worse initially, but still nearly just as bad. Oh, and the supposed maintenance that they provide? Don't expect anything to be taken care of in a timely manner! I literally have to put in three requests over a month-long period before I can get someone to ever show up to take care of any maintenance needs. As for the amenities of the apartment, the images you'll see on the website are very deceitful. The thing that looks like a pool? It's just a "soak deck", and you can't swim in it at all. This place does NOT look like the luxury apartments that their advertisements make it out to be in the SLIGHTEST. It's one step above slumming it, but only because it's a newer building. You might be drawn to this place with the prices. Just remember that you are paying between. $1.1k-1.9k for an apartment unit that you share with THREE OTHER PEOPLE, including a roommate inside of what is already a VERY CRAMPED bedroom. There is absolutely NO privacy or space for yourself in these units. Oh, and did I mention that they ask people to write positive reviews for their terrible apartment? I know because I know someone who worked here and that's exactly what they have people do. Also, be ready to be scammed out of HUNDREDS of dollars in shady fees when you move out of your unit. This place finds any excuse to wring out all of your money that they possibly can from you.

I'm not quite sure where to begin when writing about the myriad issues with University Gateway housing. First-- if you need a sign for a reason to not live here and choose somewhere else, this is it. From the day I moved in in August of 2018, the air conditioning unit above my closet was leaking. My roommate and I retrieved a small glass bucket to catch the water while we filed a work order. Little did we know, the leaking air conditioning would be a problem for the duration of our lease and would impact me and my belongings. From August on, I filed many, many work orders and each time, the Gateway staff would claim that the air conditioning unit was "fixed." As you can guess, the unit was never actually fixed and would continue to leak from different parts of the unit, resulting in a wet carpet and my inability to open my closet as my closet was the one directly below the air conditioning. It was only months later when my father intervened and that my belongings became damaged that the ignorant staff took slight notice of the problem. However, don't begin to think that things became resolved from here. In November, I alerted the staff via email after filing probably over 20 service requests that the vent was still leaking, that there was clearly mold on my belongings, and a soaked floor barring my access to my closet. When I returned from Thanksgiving break, I came back to a mold damaged pair of expensive shoes and an equally moldy laundry bag. Even when I asked them to take Winter break to have professional carpet cleaners and a professional come to clean the vent, they did not take this opportunity to resolve their wrongdoings. Imagine dealing with all of this while trying to do well in school- thanks a lot Gateway. Oh! And when a new piece of my belongings, a jacket, showed clear air conditioning leak related residue on it, the Gateway staff tried to tell me that it was unrelated to the mold on my laundry bag and $300 pair of shoes. Interesting, considering that I had worn it two days prior, put it back in my closet, and went to wear it and found it ruined. In true Gateway fashion, they used the difference in how the mold residue/air conditioning damage looked to justify only compensating me for one damaged item. And by the way, they clearly don't know how to convert Euros and gave me half of the money due for my shoes. Nice. The Gateway staff claimed that, given that they allegedly "fixed the A/C multiple times and cleaned the carpets" and that because "the residue on the shoes does not quite match with the residue on the jacket," they could not compensate me for the jacket... Even when I cited The California Housing Code, indicating their culpability in the matter, they outright ignored my email. In terms of compensation for the various damages incurred while living at Gateway, both in terms of material items damaged and the mold threat to my health, it was more a matter of principle than anything for me. University Gateway could not take the proper responsibility for its negligence. Given that I was stuck living in a crap hole for the rest of the semester, I purchased a clothing rack and emptied the closet of my belongings in order to protect my items from the leaky vent and burrowing mold. Please see attached photos for context and to realize you should run far away from living at University Gateway. I have contacted the Los Angeles Department of Public Health and look forward to seeing justice served. *P.S.* A. Not to mention the constantly going off fire alarms (we're talking 3am, 5am, etc.) B. The fact that my roommate and I never had warm shower water for the entire year we lived at Gateway despite filing (you guessed it) many service requests. C. The Wifi didn't work and we had to buy a $100 Google wifi pod.