Thorn Creek Town

Thorn Creek Town Homes Thorn Creek Town Houses. Under new management, possibly new ownership. Had my lease terminated. They put it on credit report as

27th of May, 2011 by User797704

I am a former tenant of the Thorn Creek Town Homes in Park Forest, IL. I guess I'll start by saying that after approx. the 3rd wk. living in this apartment advertised as a Rental Town House, my former wife and I were asked by Thorn Creek Town Homes to move into another unit. Upon the signing of our lease they new we had a small dog. In our lease agreement it clearly stated that we paid an extra monthly pet fee. They told us that pets were "not allowed" in our unit. They said if we wanted to keep our dog we had to move into another unit, or get out. I told them that this was ridiculous and if they made us move again I would take them to court. They dropped the whole issue. To the best that I could remember it was about 2 months after we moved in that a pipe had burst on the toilet tank in our bathroom. I awoke that morning and there was water covering almost the entire apartment floor. Keep in mind that we were in the second floor apartment. Ok, accidents happen. I understand. I shut off the valve for the toilet. I called their emergency maintenance right away. This happened early in the morning. They said that someone would be by to fix the pipe later that day. I explained that there was water covering most of the floor in our second floor apartment. We had to use blankets and sheets to soak up the water because we ran out of towels. The dog was running around the apartment like crazy. It took almost a 1 1/2 days for Their maintenance dept. to come and fix the pipe. I guess to Thorn Creek this was not considered an emergency situation. Approx. two wks. later the tenant that lived below us came home from vacation to find that all of their belongings were water damaged. I spoke with the tenant and she invited me and my ex wife inside to see the damages. This included a celling fan fixture on her kitchen table, most of the celling lying on the floor, walls had water behind the paint causing the paint to peel. There was also severely damaged furniture and electronics. The tenant said that Thorn Creek threatened that if she didn't take another unit and fulfill her lease, that they would destroy her credit. It would be days before they would repair the unit. We never spoke with her after that. At this point my ex wife and I were in a financial position that would not allow us to move out. We were stuck there. It was strange to us, and it took a while to catch onto it, but for the longest time our porch light at the bottom of the stairs would not turn on. While they remodeled the unit below us we noticed this smell of mold and mildew. This smell continued for months even after they completed the halfway remodeling job. After they finished supposedly remodeling the unit below us, our porch light began working again. This light was controlled form our unit, and possibly the unit below us. I would really like to know who's electric bill paid for the operation of that light. It wasn't long before new tenants occupied the unit below us. We met the new tenants. One day they invited us into their unit after a bbq. We talked about the situation with the previous tenant. The pipe bursting and why she left. The new tenants also explained that they had been getting rashes and suffering allergy and cold like symptoms and couldn't figure out why. Their unit smelled of fresh paint, like a new house. It covered up the mold smell very well. The downstairs tenants also began experiencing other problems with their unit. The drywall in their living room was cracking and falling down. The paint began peeling from the walls. And you could see discoloration in the paint. More than likely mold and damaged drywall that was never replaced. The ex wife and I by then were constantly spraying disinfectant spray to try and get rid of the mold smell. We had been experiencing similar symptoms of allergy or sickness. By then we were also experiencing other trouble with our unit. Drains backing up all the time, stove/oven didn't work, and the refrigerator quit working. They came to fix the drains a couple times, but the problem only became worse. They never fixed or replaced the stove/oven, and we brought in a fridge from a family friend to use temporarily because Thorn Creek said we would have to wait until a replacement fridge was available from an unoccupied unit. When would that have been? Instead of repairing/resolving the drain situation they replaced our toilet. Why this was I don't know, but the drains continued backing up in the toilet, bathtub, and the kitchen sink. The smell of raw sewage, mold, and mildew became a regular in our unit. We complained about all of this to Thorn Creek and all they could say is that nobody else was reporting anything like this. As if they were trying to say we were crazy or imagining all this. We received a cable bill with pornographic movie rentals. We contacted the cable company and they said that that they were ordered directly from our cable box. I thought this was impossible. The cable company came over to see if our cable was being "pirated" by a neighbor. It wasn't. We had no idea what was going on. We then noticed the time that the movies were rented. We were both at work when the movies were rented. I called Thorn Creek right away. We later had our time cards pulled from our employers to prove it. There were never any signs of forced entry into our unit. Someone with a key must have been there. We called the Park Forest Police and filed a report. Thorn Creek denied that any of their employees accessed our apartment while we were not home. Within a few days one of their maintenance personnel (uninvited) walked into our unit while we were home, didn't even knock. Strangely our dog ran into the bedroom. He appeared surprised that we were home and the only thing he said was "oh, I think I have the wrong apartment" and he not only left, but he ran down the stairs very quickly. I put on pants to chase him down, but he was gone, out of sight. I remember his eyes were blood shot red. He left so fast that we couldn't even make out the name on his uniform. We did recognize the uniform as a Thorn Creek uniform. (Looked like the rest of the maintenance personnel). I don't remember the maintenance non emergency business hours, but I do remember that it was after hours. I remember the fresh smell of "beer breath" in the air as I ran down the stairs to try and catch him. It became clear to my ex wife and I that Thorn Creek had no intentions of doing anything about any of this. We decided to take it a step further. We contacted the local building dept via The Village of Park Forest. The village of Park Forest never returned any of our calls or responded to our complaints. We didn't pay our rent for 2 months and this allowed us to save enough to move out. Prior to leaving, we went to Thorn Creek and spoke with a representative in their main office on Western Ave. in Park Forest, IL. We said that we wanted out of our lease. We had about four months before our lease was to expire. The woman working that day explained that we would loose our security deposit and threatened that our credit would suffer. I explained that after several reports of dangerous living conditions, including unauthorized access to our unit, and Thorn Creeks failure to do anything about the complaints, that we could no longer live under the illegal activity and circumstances that existed in our unit. Our dog would cower down and hide when we would come home from being away or drop her head rapidly when trying to pet her. As if she was being abused. She would shake like she was scared. I wish she could talk. I'm sure she was being abused by whoever was entering our unit without consent. The cable company relieved us of the fees for the pornographic pay-per-view movies that were viewed in our unit while we were at work after we submitted a police report and proof of our work hours. We left. Prior to leaving I dropped the keys for our unit with a hand written letter in an envelope marked 255 B (our apartment number). The main office was closed. We sacrificed our security deposit and our credit. I feel we were ripped off. Can a refund be obtained for this? My credit report now shows that we were evicted from Thorn Creek Town Homes. This is not even close to being true. They also put a $5,500 negative for supposedly overdue rent. I would like to know how this could be possible when we sacrificed our $1,250 security deposit and we only had four months left on our lease. The rent was $525/mo plus $100/mo for having a pet. It can't be for damages because we reported everything that ever went wrong with our apartment, they just never fixed anything. If this isn't an attempt at ripping someone off, I don't know what is.

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