The Academy on Charles Apartments

Despite our providing a rental insurance policy from the beginning the staff erroneously charged for their additional rental insurance, refused to refund and stop charging, and threatened eviction if we didn’t pay. We had to involve an attorney because the staff won’t communicate with us timely and we have to consider legal action to resolve.

The common areas are nice and the building is well maintained. The problem is the apartments themselves: the cheap construction, paper-thin walls, and incredibly tiny rooms are hugely overpriced, especially for Baltimore. As others have noted, they add insult to injury with trumped-up move-out charges.

JHU students should look elsewhere.

All fake reviews. Capping so hard. These guys do not care about any student.

As a former resident of The Academy, I am extremely disappointed with my experience living here, as I have found many times to be frustrated dealing with management as well as the maintenance staff, which seems to be a common theme amongst other residents.

First of all, the management at The Academy is super poor, as they have issues with not only communication, but are sometimes just plain incompetent. There are two groups of people in The Academy, one of which is the front office staff, while... the other is the general manager, Brittney. The front office staff are frequently not very helpful, and will tell you they don't know the answer to the questions you have, or will not give you help. If you want to speak to someone who can actually resolve your issues, the general manager is there, but she is almost never available to talk as she is either busy in meetings or on calls, and takes forever to respond to emails. They try to take advantage of students by tacking on fees all the time without clarifying with students first. They try to overcharge you on every single little thing whether and they know they can do it because they think they can take advantage of students who need a place to live near campus.

Secondly, the way The Academy handles maintenance is horrible and if you ever have issues with your apartment, be prepared for an unpleasant experience. The maintenance guy or guys will never let you know when they are coming into your apartment to repair something even though they could easily implement such a system on the resident portal where they make you create the requests, but instead they will go to your apartment without warning (several times at inconvenient and absurd hours) and knock on the door very loudly until you open it. From my experience, the maintenance staff are very rude, several times they were seemingly mad at us for things being worn out, as if it was our fault or we had deliberately broken things (which we didn't). They would often leave tools behind and wouldn't come back for them. Completely unprofessional and they should learn how to deal with people in a polite and respectful manner. Read More

The apartments are nice, but small. However, my main grievance with the academy is the management. I lived at the academy for two years as a loyal tenet. However, my three roommates and I had our apartment rented out to someone else without being given prier notice or an option to renew. Only a month into our lease term, we were sent emails about renewing, but we were never given a deadline that we had to renew by. It was never communicated that we were going to lose our apartment, and when... I did call to renew, I was informed that our apartment was no longer available. Essentially in the middle of the school semester, my three roommates and I found out that would have no place to live next year and are now scrambling to find a new apartment. If you're considering renting from the academy, think twice about it. They WILL sell your apartment and leave you stranded. Read More