Grid 5, 618 5 Avenue SW, Calgary

DO NOT RENT HERE!!!*PLEASE READ!!!*

I lived in this building for 2 years. I was 19 years old when I moved into Grid 5; I wish I had known better and never had. I renewed my lease for a second year since I was working 3 jobs as a waitress, all 3 jobs were walking distance from this apartment building, so it worked out. Renewing my lease was the biggest mistake I could have ever made. I am pleading with you not to live here. I lived alone with my cat in a bachelor suite on the 12th floor; the first year wasn’t horrible, a few issues arose but could not compare to how terrible my last year was. In the first year of living at Grid 5 (2018/2019), the heat never worked during the winter months, they shut down the water for hours at a time once or twice a month, they had/have fire drills at 6 in the morning at least once every two months, and the staff were/are unbelievably rude and unprofessional. One time, I came home to a note on my apartment door, saying that I owed $574 in late fees. I was appalled and shocked as I always pay my rent on time and keep all my receipts, and I am very organized. I grabbed my receipts as proof and went down to the office where I talked to Lydia and explained to her that the reason they put these late fees on was that they charge $2 to use the debit machine when paying rent. I usually paid half on my debit card and half on my credit card since my maximum on my cards was $1000 due to being so young and having a student account, so I would have to pay $2 twice to use the debit machine two times since I was splitting payment. So, when I went to pay one month, the staff member that I was dealing with that day was nice enough not to make me pay the $2 twice since I had to switch cards and already paid $2 for the first time. In other words, they put late fees because I didn’t pay the $2 to use the machine one time 5 months ago. Lydia tried to say that wasn’t the reason and was trying to justify some other reason that made absolutely no sense. After arguing for a bit and showing her lots of proof, she finally caved in and admitted that I was right and made me pay the $2 and dropped the late fees.

My second year at Killam Grid 5, however, made my life a living nightmare. At the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, I started noticing everything go downhill with the apartment building. The parkade began to become extremely dangerous. I saw cars with smashed windows almost every single time I went to my car. There’s a little room in the parkade which homeless people sleep, eat, drink and do drugs, and there are always homeless and sketchy people creeping around in the parkade. I have never felt safe coming home, especially since I worked weekend nights until 2-3 am every weekend. On multiple occasions, someone had cut the wires to the parkade’s garage doors, meaning no one could leave or enter the parkade until someone came to fix them, leaving people stranded if they were headed to work or coming home. A few months ago, in late October, there was a water pipe burst in the parkade. They didn’t have anyone work on this pipe for four days so the pipe was bursting water all over the parkade, making the whole parkade an extremely icy surface for days, which is obviously not safe. Another massive issue with Grid 5 is that they have 3 tiny elevators, yet only one is ever working. which causes huge crowds in the lobby and many people squeezing into a tiny elevator, which, as you can imagine, is not very good practice of social distancing. Waiting for the elevators at Grid 5 has made me late for work on several different occasions. You will be waiting for an elevator for over 25 minutes on most days.

Worst of all, here is my horrible personal experience with Grid 5:

In March, COVID-19 started, and I had lost all 3 of my waitressing jobs. I was very anxious and worried if I would be able to make rent in the months to come, so I reached out to the property manager, David, for a defferal on rent. After explaining my situation, David accepted the deferral on rent and confirmed with me that the deferral was in motion. When he approved my rent deferral, I had felt less anxious about bills and was actually quite relieved. But, low and behold, when I saw my bank statement on April 1st, they had taken the full amount of rent out of my bank account. Realizing what had just happened, I was in a state of panic as I could now not afford my other bills like parking, phone bill, wifi bill, health insurance, car insurance etc., let alone food or basic necessities to get me through the month so I reached back out to David informing him that they had taken out my full rent amount and asked him how I should proceed. His response to me was that they are conducting a government emergency fund soon for COVID-19, so you should be able to afford rent. I was utterly blown away by this response. This is a totally unacceptable way to treat your tenants, especially in such a time of uncertainty. This was also extremely unprofessional as well. About a week after this incident, I noticed an unusual stain on the ceiling in my kitchen. Right away, I contacted management. Maintenence came to look at the stain, and from the beginning, no one took it seriously. I was told once that it could even be spaghetti sauce leaking from the unit above. They took it as a joke ever since the beginning of bringing this to their attention. Maintenence sprayed the stain with white spray paint and left. As time went by, I slowly started noticing the stain reappearing and getting worse. I reached out to management yet again about the stain and never received a reply. Finally, the stain progressed into a crack and fluid-filled pocket down the side of the wall and eventually burst and leaked unknown foul-smelling fluids all over my kitchen and appliances. I had to run down to the lobby in a state of panic only to find no management on site. I ended up having to call the buildings emergency number. This was a considerable inconvenience for me. The emergency line sent out a plumber, (who took 3 hours to get to my apartment), with no knowledge of what the situation was and came unprepared with little to no tools and said he was here to check an A/C leak. This was obviously not an A/C leak. When he saw the leak, he was baffled and frustrated and told me there was nothing he could do except come back the next day with the right tools. I had to clean the unknown green, smelly fluid up myself that night. The next day maintenance came to look at the stain again; they cut a bunch of holes into the wall and took drywall samples. They still couldn’t identify the problem, so they just left, and the issue stayed unresolved for 3 more weeks with 0 updates. After no updates, I had to reach out to management once again and eventually got them to send maintenance back up to my unit. They finally identified the issue as a water leak from the unit above and were going to fix it. This was not only an inconvenience to me; this also posed a huge health and safety hazard to my cat and I as well. I had no idea what we were breathing in. I believe it was mould and mildew as I was feeling tremendously sick and coughing after a while. When I confronted Lydia with suspicion of the water leak having mould and mildew, she completely denied this. When I asked for proof of tests that there was no mould or mildew, she said she would get the test results to me as soon as possible, but the test results were never given or shown to me. I was then told by management that I would have to leave my unit for 2 days, which was again very inconvenient as I had nowhere to go, and I have a cat. It is extremely difficult to find a place to stay last minute, especially with a cat, and especially during COVID-19, when people do not want to share their space with others who do not live with them. I did what any sensible tenant would do and asked to be put in a hotel when Killam properties should’ve offered that in the first place. Killam’s response to my request was denied and instead offered to put me in the show suite in the building for one night, which was delayed by two days because maintenance was unorganized and didn’t have the right materials to begin working, despite all the time they were given to prepare. This issue could have been resolved in one week but instead took over 5 months. That is 5 months of breathing in mould and mildew and living in unsafe and unsanitary conditions when I pay full price for a clean and safe environment.
 
     On the day of August 18th, 2020, I arrived to the show suite only to be welcomed to a dirty, uncleaned place. There was garbage on the counters, old half-eaten mouldy food in the fridge and counters, yellow stains on the bedsheets, dust everywhere, other people’s personal belongings in the suite, a card written out to someone else on the table, and a dirty bathroom with a garbage can full of used tissue. Not to mention the suite also had little to no privacy being on the 6th floor facing the pool deck where people were constantly walking by the windows looking in and being obnoxiously loud, which made my cat feel extremely anxious, scared, and unwelcome. The entire time I stayed there, I slept on the couch with a sleeping bag because I felt the apartment was extremely unclean. I expected to stay there for one night and 2 days, which turned into a long 9 and a half days. That is 9 and a half days that I pay to live in a clean and safe environment that I was not provided with. This was unbelievable and was the most significant inconvenience, as I was only prepared to stay for 2 days. This caused me to go out to eat as well as buy more food for my cat and toiletries such as toilet paper and soap, spending money I couldn’t afford to spend. Not to mention the wifi was incredibly slow and, at some points, didn’t even work at all, causing my data to go over on my phone, which doubled my phone bill, costing me more money that I cannot afford to spend. The whole time that I was there I was never informed of any updates on my unit or how long I would actually be staying there, or even any apology on why it was taking so long. The worst of all, I was awakened to the sound of the unit door being unlocked and opened and a stranger walking in. The man quickly left after noticing someone was staying in the suite. As a 21-year-old girl, this was an extremely horrifying and traumatic moment for me and was a huge invasion of my privacy and proves that Grid 5 has no communication between their staff. 

After dealing with this horrible experience, I contacted the manager, David, once again bringing to his attention everything that had happened in the past 6 months with Grid 5. I asked If I could leave my lease one month early so I could save one month’s rent of money since I could not afford it. He then set up a meeting for me and my father (who was the cosigner of my lease) to meet up and discuss the possibility of leaving my lease one month early. We set a date for the meeting to be that Tuesday on September 29th, 2020, and he even sent out a calendar confirmation for the meeting, to which I confirmed. My father took a half-day off work to attend this meeting; we showed up 15 minutes early, found the unit that he wanted to meet in, and waited 1 hour in the hallway for him to show up. After the hour, we went down to the main office in the lobby, where nobody even knew if David was even supposed to come to the building that day. Later that day, David contacted me, apologizing that he didn’t make it to the meeting because he had to be somewhere else and clearly didn’t think our meeting was important enough to reach out to my father and I to reschedule. We set a new date for the meeting to be on October 8th, 2020. My father and I attended the meeting, where we discussed all the hardships and personal costs that Grid 5 had put me through to fix the water leak in my apartment. David told us that he could not let me leave the lease early as it was a lease break but that he could possibly give me compensation of one month’s rent instead, but would have to bring it up with his supervisors. David said that he could most definitely compensate at least the half months rent to cover being out of my suite for 10 days, my data on my phone going over etc. My father and I agreed that the $512.50 offer was definetely appreciated but we felt that the whole one month’s rent would be a more appropriate compensation for everything that Grid 5 had put me through. David agreed that the $512.50 was owed, but the rest he would have to clear with his supervisor. After never hearing back from David, I emailed him multiple times, asking for updates to which he would never respond. The last month that I was living in my apartment, In November, I was organizing my things and getting ready to move when they announced that they were going to be putting in new windows and that I needed to move my furniture away from the windows. I moved my furniture away from the windows, but when the date came to change the windows, the contractors never showed up, and they had to postpone. When the postponed date came, the same thing happened, and they had to postpone once again. This went on for two whole weeks. Finally, after two weeks, they came to change the windows and left a huge dusty mess in my apartment right when I was about to move. They left a note saying they would be back to hang the blinds back up and clean the mess, but surprise! they never came back, and I got impatient and tried to clean the dust up myself, which ended up completely ruining the motor of my only vacuum and broke it. The blinds were never put back up. Finally, it was time to move out of this horrible place called Grid 5. I moved out on November 30th and felt the weight lift off my shoulders, knowing I would never have to go back or deal with Grid 5 ever again. Until on December 2nd, when I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription that I needed. When I went to pay for the prescription, my card had declined three times, so I had to leave the pharmacy without my important prescription. When I got back to my car, I checked my bank account and then I saw that Grid 5 HAD TAKEN MY FULL RENT AMOUNT OUT FOR DECEMBER WHEN I DON’T EVEN HAVE A LEGAL LEASE WITH THEM ANYMORE. I was infuriated and contacted Grid 5 right away. They “apologized” and said there was nothing they could do but wait for the head office to write a cheque for the one month they took out. At this point, I had $-446 in my bank account and was charged an overdraft charge. I had to sell my tv in order to get my bank account out of the negatives and so that I could afford my other bills. I called back every single day to see if my cheque was ready to be picked up. FINALLY, after calling every single day for 21 days! The cheque was finally ready to be picked up. I hadn’t gotten any gifts for my family for Christmas yet, since all of December, I had only $30 in my bank account because of Killam Properties’ incompetence. After this, I had found out that the manager of Grid 5, David, had actually been fired! He was fired because he wasn’t doing a very good job at managing, clearly, and that is why I never heard back from David about the compensation. So, I called Grid 5 and asked to talk to the new manager, who’s name is Donald. When I first spoke to Donald, he seemed friendly and actually seemed like he cared about my issue and agreed that he would carry on the issue that I had discussed with David and would find me justice and compensation for the what Grid 5 has put me through. I had many phone calls and email conversations with Donald explaining everything that had happened and how the conversation with David went regarding compensation, with my dad as a witness. Donald presented my case to his supervisors, and I thanked him immensely because I actually thought something was finally going to happen for me. I didn’t hear back from Donald for a month, so I decided to reach out and ask for an update. His email back was as follows: “We have reviewed the facts and information provided; it is regret to inform you that we are unable to fulfill your request at this time due to lack of confirmation agreement in place.” After being promised, at least half month’s rent compensation and most likely one whole month’s rent compensation, I ended up getting $0 compensation. This is completely unacceptable. Killam Properties WILL take advantage of you. Killam Properties DOES NOT care about you as a tenant or as a person. If there’s one thing Killam Properties is good for it’s saying “sorry”.

Grid 5 treats its tenants like garbage and does not care about any single one of its tenants. You can tell that the staff do not care about their jobs. This company will try anything to rip you off!! Please don’t rent here. Tell all your friends and family about this experience. I don’t want to see anyone else get treated like this by Killam’s Grid 5. They WILL take advantage of you and they WILL walk all over you. It is NOT worth it. Trust me.

PLEASE DO NOT RENT FROM GRID 5 APARTMENTS!! YOU WILL REGRET IT, AND YOU WILL LOSE MONEY AND GET TREATED HORRIBLY!! SPREAD AWARENESS ABOUT THIS COMPANY! DO NOT RENT HERE!!

Not recommending.
Most of the time one out of the 3 elevators is not working, the other one is locked for the personnel use or moving and there is only one elevator for 300 units! you have to wait at least 15 min for the elevators or using the stairs up to your unit at 28 floor!
The management is not taking care of the inquiries and barely even reply to emails!

There are BBQ near the pool but the propane tanks are empty!
There is a gym but no dumbbells!
Set your expectations very low if you are going to live here. Expect to send at least 3 emails and several calls and waiting from 2 weeks to 2 months for each issue that you have with your unit to solve.

I wish I could put zero as rating. Living in this building is frustrating. It has 3 elevators, although one of them is shut down , the other one is for move in or move out, just 1 elevator is for residents. I’ve to wait for 20 min to get in. I wish I could move before my contract ends.

How this building gets away with what it does is beyond me.
there are SO many issues, that if i listed them, anyone reading would think it is a lie. i do not think i will bother. but, here is something you can actually check for yourself.
come down. stand in front of the building, or across the street, or at street corner… and listen.
the SOUND id horrible . and you MAY think, oh thats just downtown. THINK AGAIN. it comes DIRECTLY from this building. i know. i live in it.
see all those balconies ? see anyone actually ON them enjoying the sunshine ? on nice SOUTH facing side? NOPE.. know why?
listen again.. that sound is Echoing from the building parkade.. it echoes UP the buildings across the street.. all the way up.
its Horrible.. oh wait.. maybe you think ” i can just close my windows” that wont really bother me.. or “i’ll get used to that”.. no. you wont.
close ALL your windows. does not matter. there is almost ZERO insulation.
so.. ALL sounds travel. oh wait, its a concrete building !.. yes. it is!, just the floors. the walls are literally empty. Freeeeezing in winter… the building gives you small heaters you plug in to keep you warm, or like most people do here, the have to turn their ovens on and leave door open to keep warm.
for reals!
and yup.. if freezing in winter.. what you think summer is like?
free Air conditionning yeah !!!.. yup.. you KNOW why its free. it barely works! and is SO NOIZEY you will have to BLAST Your TV to hear it.. for real.
Complain? sure.. your answer ? ” the buiding was built in the 60’s .. its how it is ” .. well.. RENT WITH PRICING that Matches…
seriously. biggest mistake of my life was moving in here.
Expect to see HUGE public outcry from this building. it IS coming.
Slumlords DO exist. they come to you as sheep.. they are Wolves dressed in wool
please. Be careful.
but, if you want to get in here EASY.. no problem. you’ll get in… getting out? thats another story.
(( dont take my word for it.. stand where i told you .. and just listen ))
and go for an interview… and READ the Small print… Read it !!
— ask them to take you on building tour.. look at the washers .. FILTHY !!!!!
take a GOOD look at the ” GYM ” .. take a GOOD look at the baseboards, the heating systems IN the apts!!, LOOK.. and you will see.. like i said.. do not take my word for it. take your own.

Pros:
– Great location
– Close to Prince’s Island
– Next to bike path
– Above Dollarama, a cornerstore, and soon to be bubble tea cafe
– Nice neighbours
– Reasonable rent

Negs:
– Some loud neighbours
– Random people yelling at night
– During cold weather, street people may find their way inside. One person on drugs were in the washroom and went through our laundry.
– Parking is a public parkade. Our car was broken into. Never leave anything in the car.