Cityhomes Estates

Our flat was a new build, due to be fully completed by Xmas 2017. We moved in mid-Jan 2018. -No lift until September 2019– tenants were not told this before moving in. The flats are advertised as disabled friendly but the disabled lift wasn't working when we moved out -The communal street door was broken & not locking - we would get gangs smoking in the stairwell & residents felt unsafe. We had had various stabbings & a shooting in the immediate vicinity of the flats. Despite constant emails and calls this issue was not resolved for 5 months. Cityhomes said they did not consider this a safety issue -When we moved in, there were no communal bins for months, meaning we were living on top of a festering pile of bin bags. They were then put in a shed which was too small for all bins to be accessed so rubbish was still dumped on the floor. This persisted for months despite residents telling them the easy solution of swapping the bin shed & the larger bike shed. We were without the promised bike shed for months, meaning my partner had to carry his bike up to the 3rd floor - Mould in the bedroom: we had to fight to get this fixed and was told it was not an issue. Our washing machine was not installed when we moved in & it took over a week to be done. The flat had also not been cleaned as promised, we spent a day cleaning building dust from every surface -The out of hours phoneline was not manned so we had no way of contacting them in an emergency. We returned home from work to find an alarm in the hallway going off and holding the street door wide open. After 4 hours of persistent calling, Sam, the owner finally came out at 11pm. He told us, that evening, and later via email that it was not a problem that the emergency line was not manned and that we should just call 999 to do his job for him -High contract renewal fees - £150pp. I had to push to get a breakdown of what this covered. We were 2 in a flat and given this breakdown: £100 = new contract; £150 = gas safety certificate (ours had expired and we were living without one meaning the landlord was in breach of the law) & £50 to put our deposit in a new protection scheme as they had decided to change schemes. Those with 3 in a flat had to pay £450 but Gery couldn't explain what this extra £150 covered -Gery persistently misrepresented the law governing tenancies. She insisted the landlord could give tenants one month notice when it is two. This had influenced some tenant's decision to sign a new tenancy. She was rude & argumentative & refused to answer simple questions -The staff are rude & incompetent & would ignore calls/emails. Sam had a screaming argument with me- he said I was a terrible person for complaining about the issues. Harry was due to meet us one evening after work to go through all the issues with the flats- he cancelled 10mins before saying that he didn't realise how far from the office the flats were. Zac who showed a set of prospective tenants around our flat – his emails were incoherent so just arranging a time was difficult. After the viewing, he had left our balcony door unlocked & not put the 2nd lock on our front door, leaving the flat vulnerable. When I emailed about this he did not respond. -Other tenants reported these issues, which were not adequately dealt with: a first floor flat balcony door which couldn't be locked (another tenant on the first floor had his bike stolen from his balcony so it is possible for people to access these balconies from the street); poor bathroom plumbing leading to a constant sewage smell; motorbike getting stolen from inside the bike shed. For the interest of balance, we did receive two (small) rent discounts after fighting for months for some compensation. These were provided by the owners of the property and nothing (not even an apology) from Cityhomes. We only got the 2nd one after a residents petition/threatening to involve the Property Ombudsman. All of the residents were dissatisfied with the service & many left asap