Highland View Apartments
reviews and complaints

Everything said above regarding Highland View "Luxury" Apartments is true. I lived in the building before and after the new "management" and "remodeling" took place. Before the new manager, Keith Mizer (NOT a misnomer) was shipped in from Alcatraz or wherever he was prior to coming to Highland View, the place was actually quite nice. really nice manager who was genuinely concerned about problems and worked tirelessly to address and remedy them. Even in an older building that really did need attention, it was much more pleasant than living under the new regime.

Let me also state that during my second week of living in Highland View (the second time), Olive Street Bistro, which was what I saw when I went out of my 9th floor balcony, burnt to the ground. I watched it burn from very early on until SFD finally got it under control. Never was there a security guard or manager checking on anyone and there was smoke and sparks covering Highland View. Nice.

I moved back into the place when I relocated back to Shreveport (I'm in higher education; folks move a lot) and remembered my pleasant experience before. There was the above-mentioned steakhouse, Chinese restaurant, etc., etc., which of course never came to fruition. I really didn't have a problem with water temperature but the walls are paper thin, there is a non-existent kitchen (a tiny bar sink, two burner stove, and a dormitory fridge. Oh, no oven either, just a microwave.

As stated above, the pool was very often closed on beautiful weekend and if you had more than one guest, you had to go through the awful manager, Keith, to get passes. I was treated with such contempt each time I wanted to have a couple of friends over to swim with those passes. P.S., there was never ANYone at the pool when I was down there except who I brought.

The laundry room on the 9th floor was a joke and the washers/dryers were probably brought over on the Mayflower. My next door neighbor apparently was a heavy smoker and not very clean because cigarette smoke would pour in on me in the shower from a tiny vent over the shower head and I began seeing roaches in the kitchen area although I am fastidiously tidy.

My lease was up in August, I found a new place to live, left the apartment much, much cleaner than it was when I moved in and I was still harassed by manager Keith about all kinds of things and he also cursed me out in front of my friends from church who were helping me move.

Pulling away from that place for the last time was one of the best feelings in my life. Knowing I would never, EVER have to deal with Keith Mizer again was priceless.

One last note, I wrote letter after letter and made phone call after phone call to the parent management company in New Orleans which went unanswered and unreturned. I actually went to the address listed for the parent company while on business in New Orleans and found the name on the building but no one would respond and the door was locked. I made three attempts during normal business hours.

Do yourself a favor and keep away from Highland View and Keith Mizer. You'll be glad you did.

WOW ! i know a couple that lives there and they have nothing but good things to say about this apt complex. I'm currently living in houston tx and i was thinking about leasing one of these apt but now knowing this im currently unsure. because its been pages after page of the same horror stories!

Well..I want to give a fair and balanced view of this place. So I will do the Pros/Cons. I have been here 2 years and my lease is up soon, so trust me, I know what I'm talking about...and yes, I agree with everything written above.

PROS:

- Nice, little gym. Treadmills and boflex machines.
- Swimming pool with outdoor grills
- cheap rent
- nice views
- great location (close to downtown, uptown and I-49)
- no bug problems
- overall pretty safe (they monitor the property well)

CONS:

- VERY small kitchen space! (if you enjoy cooking, don't rent a studio)
- management - bad attitude/shady..they basically tell you what you want to hear (as with any apartment management I guess)
- HORRIBLE NOISE! I have the neighbors from hell. You can hear everything your neighbor does. This is the biggest thing and why I would NOT recommend this place.
- Plumbing - not exactly "luxury" apartments when you have brown water come out of your bath when you first turn it on...
- Elevators- constantly break down - hey, on the bright side you'll get into good shape walking up the stairs...
- management is a little OCD about everything, even when it comes to parking and who you let in (yes, they watch the camers 24-7 and will confront you if you let someone in and they think you do not know them...)

** All in all I would not recommend this place. If you want feel like you're in a prison lockdown then this is the place for you. HORRIBLE NEIGHBORS don't help either...**

I agree 100% Can't wait to get out of this hell hole. The fact that these people title these apartments "luxury living" is amusing. I have lived here for a while and have seen a lot go down and experienced a lot. So I will tell my story. My biggest mistake started in 2007. I wanted a cheap/descent place to live. Heard about these "luxury" apartments and thought it was perfect. They paint it picture perfect when you talk to them. I was told a Steak House was coming soon, hair salon and a little grocery store would all be put in the lobby "soon". Yeah..been here 2 years and have yet to see any of these things. The manager told me how all these "Hollywood" people live here when they come into town (found out later it was one chick with a small part in a movie and a couple of movie set workers...). So with my stupidity, I signed the lease. Well to start off..the water was horrible. Took months to get the water working properly. Still have brown water come out when I first turn it on in the bath. The elevators constantly break down. Had to walk up 11 flights of stairs once when they were both broken. How do both elevators break at the same time? Yes exactly...

If you have a maitenance problem on the weekends or during off hours...good luck. I had plumbing problems on a weekend one time and it was Monday morning before it was fixed. Luckily I have family in town I could stay with, but if you don't, guess you'll have to fork out a hotel cost.

I feel like I'm in an airport with all of these security cameras. It's a good thing I guess, but I feel like I have a second mom watching me...

The landlord is horrible and rude. He has an attitude with everyone. For some odd reason he thinks he's above everyone else and talks down to you like you're 5. Why he thinks he is some awesome person for working in a dump is beyond me...

I even renewed my lease thinking all of the things mentioned above would change...well I was wrong once again.

Don't get convinced that because they have bamboo flooring and granite countertops(I can't cook because the kitchen is so small...it has a mini stove top, mini fridge and no counter space...) and "great views" of Shreveport that this is a place worth living in. If you can sleep with hearing every word and noise your neighbor makes, then this shouldn't be an issue for you.

Do yourself a favor and just stay far away. It's seriously not worth it. I always have said you get what you pay for. (thought it would be different here) Should have gone with my gut feeling on this one!

If you are thinking of moving into Highland View apartments, let me please tell you, It's a very bad idea! I've been living there for quite a few months now and there are ALWAYS problems. Just a few examples are: 1) there are very bad plumbing problems such as water in the shower is either burning hot or freezing cold. There is no in between, no warm showers EVER! If you like bathing in boiling water this shouldn't be a problem for you. I've complained about this and all the manager ever says is "no one else complains about it" No one else takes a shower in my bathroom dumb ###! Also there has been a leak in apartment directly above us for the entire time we've been there. All maintenance does to "fix the problem" is change out the tile and make a huge mess that I then get to clean up.
2) the pool is ALWAYS closed! Today is a beautiful sept day and the sign says " pool closed due to weather conditions". I don't know, maybe it's to hot to swim?
3) the pool will be closing for the summer on sept 7. This is LOUISIANA where it stays hot this whole month... why does it close again?
4) if you want to move in these "luxury" apartments, you have to have renters insurance because when the pipes finally burst (and they will) Highland View doesn't want to be held responsible for all of your things that are ruined, so you pay a little less rent and get renters insurance.
5) the water in my bathtub is still brown coming out after 9 months of living there. There is just something not right about that. I've lived in quite a few apartments in Shreveport and that hasn't happened at any of them except the one that calls itself "luxury"... odd huh?
6) the dishwasher backs up quite often and has to get water vaccuumed out of it.
7) it is a gated complex but the little side gate in the back of the parking lot stays open constantly.
8) the security cameras everywhere are a little stalkerish. i mean really, who wants to break it to those apartments anyway, have you not seen the outside of the building? or the neighborhood it's in?
9) there is ONE washer and ONE dryer per floor for about 15 residents to share... enough said.

Like I said, these are just a few. Seriously, DO NOT move into these apartments!

I recently moved out of this property for a variety of reasons.

1. I noticed that the electric bill continued to climb in the 8-months that I was at Highland View. My early electric bill for my small studio was only $30. I had 2 jobs and was never home. My last light bill at Highland View was about $160. And just as the previous blogger noted, management WOULD NOT give any proof that there was a meter to justify that I owed such a rediculous payment. All I got was an ATTITUDE and management would ALWAYS walk away.

2. The entire building had to be evacuated as ordered by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality because the company had removed asbestos from the building without the benefit of containment. As a result, asbestos particles were found throughout our apartments, and they had to seal off each floor and vacuum the particles out of the air. The crew they had hired for this clean-up process ended up stealing several items from our apartments while we were in the hotel. When approaching management about the theft, they did not want to give any comment. It took several months to recieve replacements for the items stolen.

Wait, it gets better...

3. As time went on, I noticed that the building did not have one single ammenity that was promised before I signed my lease. Gym? no. Pool? No. Internet? NO! Not even Internet. Yet, to every single new resident, We had a pool that was to be completed within 4-6 weeks, a fitness room, a Steak House by mid-summer, and 'a bid for a beauty salon had just been placed last Tuesday.' Lies, lies, lies...

4. Lots of water problems. Many times we did not have water pressure. Sometimes the water was only hot. Other times it was only cold. Management would continue to leave notes on our door telling us of water cut-off times throughout the building in an effort to fix the same problem that was promised to be fixed months before. Nothing was ever fixed. At one point, I had HOT water in my toilet. The water was so hot, that steam would come from the toilet bowl after it was flushed!

I came out of my apartment one morning and the ceiling on the 12th floor had collapsed due to a roof leak on a rainy day. The hole remained in the roof for one-week before it was fixed.

The laundry facility was hardly ever in working order. When the washing machine drained on the 12th floor, the bathroom on the 1st floor would overflow with the excess water from 12. This was an ongoing process the entire time I lived there. One weekend, The Washer over-flowed in the hallway of the 12th floor. Being that it was a 3-day weekend, the water sat in the hallway for 3 whole days, leaving the 12th floor unbearable for the smell of mildew.

4. You could hear everything your neighbors talked about and thought about.

5. You couldn't park in the parking lot without management harassing you about a parking pass. Even though the management knew the cars in the parking lot belonged to the tenants (They had the liscense plate #'s of every car in the lot filed in the office), they would still threaten to tow your car away by leaving nasty letters on your windshield or threatening you in the hall about towing your Audi away.

6. I felt like I was in a maximum security prison. 7 cameras and a security guard would meet you before you even got into the door. If that wasn't enough, The creepy apartment manager, Keith, would monitor the cameras from his apartment and question you later about people you had coming to your apartment. For example: "Who's that girl you were with last night?" Or, "Why are you out so late? You left your apartment at 2:10 last night, and you didn't get back till 5AM? What's going on?" or "I seen you bought a new stereo the other day. It must be nice?!" NOSEY!

7. The last straw for me was when I seen them secretly remove more asbestos from the 9th floor to parking lot dumpster Without containing anything. They waited until Louisiana Environmental had left and they had their Mexican construction crew go in and bust up asbestos floor tile and insulation while we were still living in the building. The same elevator used to haul the asbestos in the early early morning was the same elevator used by the tenants. This elevator was always extremely dusty around 11:00AM but was completely clean top to bottom by around 2PM. The dumpster had a sign on it that read "Danger: ASBESTOS Cancer and Lung Disease Hazard. Authorized Personel Only. Respirators and protective clothing are required in this area. This dumpster was in and out in less than a week. When questioning the construction crew: "I know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing."

I obtained video footage of all of the floors within Highland View. I have photos of the dumpster that was in the parking lot at the time, along with samples of some of the materials that were being ripped out of the building at the time. I felt that all of this was PLENTY of reason to break my lease, and I got the hell out of that place and I wasn't the only one.

If you are considering moving to these apartments, the view is nice and the price is tempting, but this place is a NIGHTMARE!
If you move in, you will surely regret it.