Finding a new home next semester?
Students looking for homes, or living in a property named Global House, beware. Somethings that don’t fit quite right:
Some of us students live in apartments managed by Student Housing Australia. I’m not too sure about the happenings in the other properties managed by it, so I’m going to focus on the one named Global House alone.
I’ve been hearing so much gripe about it. No, no, nothing of the supernatural - at least I hope not. But here’s the thing - shall you report a fault that needs fixing (say, your stove won’t light), the agency loans the key to your apartment out to the contractors, who will pop by in the day to fix things up. A courtesy call will be made to you to check if you’d like to be home while that’s happening.
And here comes the sucker. The odd thing is, you’d still come home one day and find your stove working fine! It’s been happening for awhile now, unplanned visits, and I’ve been hearing it from the tenants with frowny faces the next morning.
It gets worse. For the second time this year (let me be dramatic but still factual and add “in the period of four months”), two apartments on the first floor had been broken into - laptops stolen, cameras missing, loose change abducted, beer kidnapped. Ipods apparently spared. (Conclusion? Burglar loves laptops, cameras, and needs to take the tram home since he/she is too drunk to drive.)
The cops said someone could’ve climbed in from the window. That’s ridiculous, in my opinion. The window of one apartment was locked, and the other had its window facing another apartment block. You’d need Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak to do a trick like that. Still, let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and say the burglar(s) were actually X-Men and flew.
More bad news! It was advertised on SHA’s website that Global House is “state of the art” and has a “security entrace”. If state of the art meant having a full set of steak knives (for in case you come face-to-face with said burglars) and security entrace referred to the light that comes on when you’re fumbling for your keys, well… amazing. There are no CCTVs, no keycard access hence no access logs, no frontdesk. Students I’ve spoken to never quite expected to learn this after moving in.
So many flaws, so little time. You people out there who are still finding for homes to live in next semester, keep security points like this in mind - trust me, it’s not nice coming home to find things magically fixed or worse yet, missing.
To give SHA some breathing room, I’ll be nice and add that this was all accurate to the date this post is published. I’ll make edits if I suddenly find myself staring at a camera on the lift landings (or if I get a court order for, I don’t know, libel.)
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Its astonishing that they would actually give your keys to the contractor. (That, alone, is enough to make you wonder if the people running Global House don’t somehow benefit personally from the contractors having access to your flat. Well, maybe thats a bit too much of a conspiracy theory, but it sounds like a bizarre way to run things…)
Have you thought of getting a locked box to bolt inside your cupboard for hard-to-replace things?
Haha!
I guess the conspiracy theories will be taking it too far… though those involved losing their personals are already coming up with them. I’d like to think that everything’s just a misunderstanding, and perhaps even accidental, and that the contractors have nothing to do with the break ins.
Perhaps that’s the case, and I wouldn’t want to falsely accuse anyone… but still, it’s disturbing. Safety and security, to me, is foremost in a home, and it’s just been breached.
About the locked box idea: very good!
Check out the RTBA / Consumer Vic site or give them a call. You landlord and yourself should agree to a time/date to do repairs and NOT showup whenever they want. Landlords can NOT enter the property unless notice is given. I would never ever let any repairman, agent, etc. into my house without being present.
http://tinyurl.com/y3c3wd
Just another classic case of the locals abusing the cash cows from overseas. They figure since they’re rich enough to come here and steal their jobs, women and wash the White Australia with Yellow Perils and what-nots, what’s a few laptops or mp3 players.