CINCINNATI — Nearly one month after a move-in mess, all students with leases at The Deacon apartment complex just off UC's campus should be moved in by the start of next week.
Water leaks from the HVAC and sprinkler systems caused damage to a number of apartments this summer, delaying move-in for some students, according to UC and complex owner-manager Yugo USA. But those displaced students should be into their apartments by Monday, Sept. 12, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
The water damage impacted sophomore Grace Sena's room in an apartment. Her friends were able to move in in August, but the floors in her room were so damaged she has been commuting from her home on Cincinnati's west side.
"The carpet was soggy," she said. "They ripped up all the floors. All the floors in my room were damaged and [so were] some of the floors in the hallway to get into the kitchen."
The university put other impacted students in hotels — including Allison Hudak's sophomore daughter.
"I'm really concerned we're going to get the green light to move but not be given what I would feel like are the adequate reassurances that everything is ok with the space," Hudak said.
Some students were told their rooms or apartments were not impacted by water damage but arrived to find damageof other kinds — or trash and food left by the previous tenants, uncleaned since they moved out.
The carpet in the complex's hallways had been ripped out, but glue was left exposed causing shoes to stick. There were holes in walls and large scrapes across doors and walls in the hallways. One out-of-state parent shared a photo with WCPO that seemed to show mold in a vent inside an apartment.
In late August, the university took temporary control of the maintenance requests and housekeeping from Yugo USA and The Deacon management, after dozens of complaints.
"We delayed move-in for about 300 students," said Jack Miner, UC vice provost of enrollment management, said on Aug. 23. "The Deacon is really having issues keeping up with all the maintenance issues and recapturing the time that they lost for the normal preventative issues to get ready for the beginning of school."
It set up a webpage for communication about the status of apartments. It lists a schedule for finishing the hallway flooring, which will require tenants to be out of apartments during the day on a set week, depending on their floor.
Parents and students, though, expressed frustration over the lack of answers when they reached out.
"The hardest part of all this is just the lack of communication," Hudak said. "Nobody responds, they don't return calls, they don't return emails."
Hudak's frustration stemmed largely from the disparate experience she was paying for her daughter - from a private room and bathroom in an apartment, to sharing a hotel room without a kitchen and having to drive or catch a shuttle to campus. Hudak said her daughter was finally told days ago that the university had given her a meal plan as part of the move to the hotel - but said no one told her until now.
She said she was concerned about the other maintenance issues we uncovered, too.
"There's so many things, like the pictures and videos you showed, those were things that, did those even have anything to do the leaks?" Hudak asked.
The Deacon bills itself as a luxury student housing complex and the closest one to the University of Cincinnati campus.
UC Housing rents about half the apartments in The Deacon, providing an on-campus-style living experience, with resident assistants and other amenities. Yugo USA leases the rest of the complex.
On Wednesday, university spokesperson M.B. Reilly said seven students in three of the UC Housing units still needed wall repair/painting and cabinets. In an email, she said Yugo USA and the local property manager found "alternate/temporary fixes" like different colored cabinets because of supply chain issues, but said all units would be fully functional by the time students moved in.
Sena said her roommates told her work started in her room last week, so she was planning to move in soon. But she worried about ongoing issues in the complex.
"I'm concerned about the other things in the apartment that don't even work, like the washing machine," Sena said. "And I'm concerned just because we've already put in so many requests for things to be fixed and that it's just never gonna happen while we live there."
UC Housing hosted an open forum for questions and concerns in The Deacon lobby last week, according to its website.
Watch Live:
