Flatbush Gardens

Don’t move here simple been here for 3 years and tryna move smh worst of the worst. Nice cute apartments tho but in the middle of crap.

Mailing system still stink… three hours on a line to pick up a Christmas package. It’s hot as hell on the line. Fan doesn’t come on until the second post person is delivering the mailed letters. Then that mail person sounds like they have a fight in the mailroom with the post boxes. Slamming everything in the cage. The post office in Vanderveer/​Flatbush Garden is only opened Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you have a one day package you still have to wait Wednesday’s or Saturdays to pick it.

I only gave this place 1 star because I wanted to write a review.
I moved here within this past year and it’s been a NIGHTMARE and that’s putting it nicely. Let me start out by saying the apartments are in fact newly renovated and yes all your utilities are included. Now as far as the free laundromat and gym facilities? It’s all a blatant lie! I have lived here almost a year and have yet to see 1 «security» personal. The playground they refer to is there but unless you want your child running amongst the rats and mice sized roaches I would pass.
My first 30 days here were pretty good. I don’t know what happen but on the 31^st day it all went to hell. The leasing agent told me that the hallways were getting redone but the cleaners keep them clean until the repair starts. I spoke with a few neighbors and that’s been the lie that has been told for years now. My building has NO incinerator! They use a big garbage bag that everyone puts their garbage in and the next morning maintenance comes and empties it. ITS A BREEDING GROUND FOR RATS ROACHES AND MICE.
They have a laundry room that’s also connected to the mail room. I’ve never used the laundromat because it smells like mold and looks unsafe because of the lack of lighting and no sense of security. Anyone can walk in and be there at any given time because it’s 24 hours. Some people have said homeless people come there in the winter!
The mail room is a JOKE. You’ll be getting mail from people who no longer live there which is normal but you have no way to even give the mail back so most people just throw the mail on the floor which just sits there. The infamous package room is an even bigger joke! They are only open on Wednesday 10−2pm and Saturdays 9−1pm. They only hold your package for a week and then send it back. So if your like myself and work both of these days your entirely screwed. UPS and FedEx do not come to your apartment. They ring your intercom and when you ask who is it no one answers. That’s the extent of you getting your delivery.
The front desk personnel have got to be the most unprofessional rudest people you will EVER meet. You go in there to ask questions or make request and your met with attitude and rudeness. IF your able to even speak to them because they love to be on personal phone calls or talking on their Bluetooth.
For a 1 bedroom apartment they want you making close to 70,000 a year but have the quality lower than homeless shelters.
Their are some people who like myself come and go to work and home & try to stay under the radar. But majority of the people here don’t work, sit in front of the buildings on the steps and just smoke weed and talk loudly all NIGHT long, all the while playing music. Let’s not forget standing in the hallways smoking weed and playing music off their phones all night. I haven’t bought any furniture because I’m not staying here. Besides my bed set and TV that’s the only thing I have here and I’m keeping it that way. It’s no sense in buying a living room set because you won’t be able to sit in your living room from weed smoke and rift raft in the hallways.
If you plan to move here DONT. Leasing agents will show you the apartment during the day when nothing is really happening but tell them you would like to view it at 4:30pm. Or just ride thru during the evening and night hours and you’ll see just what your getting.
It’s a HORRIBLE PLACE TO LIVE. I haven’t even invited anyone other than my boyfriend here because it’s such a sorry place to live and I’m mortified to show anyone that this is where I reside.
Please don’t ignore my review and take it very serious. For the almost 1400 you’ll pay for a 1 bedroom, it just isn’t worth the hassle.

The management is very poorly run here. I have been trying to renew my lease for 3 weeks now, (starting second yr on ¹¹⁄₁) which you would think flatbush gardens would be supportive of. Instead I have gone out of my way multiple times to sign documents at odd hours, when I can get a meetings booked with the management office, and it sounds like one document still needs to be resigned. I work Monday– Friday, 9 hours a day and flatbush gardens has been inflexible and not understanding towards allowing me to sign at times I am not working. While asking to get the form to sign an renew for yet a second time (still unclear why i am having to sign again) my husband and I have been hung up on and yelled at by people that run the management office. I still have been unsuccessful in booking an appointment (again) at a time that I am not at work… Not sure I want to renew any more and it’s not the area so much as the people who run flatbush gardens.

Living in Flatbush Gardens is worse than puking up blood, finding out your crush is dating your dad, scooping your eyes out with a rusty spork, or seeing the «$ 3.00 charge fee» appear on an ATM.
Flatbush Gardens is a «garden» the same way Chernobyl could be considered a lovely place to bring up a new born. In winter, you can’t tell whether you’re stepping on glass shards or pieces of ice. During the 4^th of July, you can’t tell whether it’s illegal fireworks or firearms being shot into the sky.
It is not 15 minutes from Manhattan, as the website will kindly insist, but 15 minutes away from anything resembling contemporary urban infrastructure. Comes with free laundry facilities that don’t work and free gym facilities that don’t exist. Your mail will only get stolen 95% of the time. The only things larger than the stray cats are the cockroaches that feed on them. The only thing larger than the cockroaches are the bullshit charges management will invent.
When my roommate and I unloaded our belongings onto the sidewalk and began dragging them toward our building, a neighbor greeted us with a resounding, «Welcome to Hell.» And he wasn’t wrong.
Someone was shot and killed in the building next to us in the first week. Someone was raped in our elevator by the end of the month. And during the dead of night we often can’t tell whether our upstairs neighbors are beating their children or playing violent video games. Only once did we walk on our roof to find 20 cops. More than once we have woken up screaming, «God, how loathsome it all is.»
December was a bitter month with music that shook our walls like maracas until 5 AM every morning. One April night we heard the sound of rushing water as loud Niagara Falls in the distance. Suddenly, the roof of our living room started gushing water – spraying the couch and drenching the bug traps we’d futilely laid out. The neighbors above us had somehow managed to flip an entire aquarium onto their floor with fish and all flopping around. «No biggie,» he told us as our ceiling developed a large bloated bubble the size of half a watermelon.
Let the record show that Flatbush Gardens has attempted to evict us for no other offense other than paying our rent on time every month. Lost every single significant document regarding our finances and identities, and refused to process or acknowledge our repeated attempts at legal application for lease.
If you plan to move here, you should be prepared to handle, not only the undisputed incompetence of its managerial leaders, but also the youths that regularly hang out in hallways nearby the elevators smoking pot and blasting explicit music on their phones. If you can’t take getting a little second hand high from the clouds of fumes that will waft under your door, this is not the place for you.
Hitch a tent or curl up under a newspaper in Grand Central. You’ll probably have a shorter commute and experience less noise pollution.

My fiancé and I went to view «Flatbush Gardens», less than one year ago, when we were seeking an affordable apartment in Brooklyn. Now, I am not from Brooklyn, but I work with a lot of people that know Brooklyn like the back of their hands, and when I mentioned this place, they were like HELL NO!!! It was called Vandeveer, at one time, and it is the projects. Gentrifying will take a while over there. I definitely saw some new tenants, while visiting the management office, and I new immediately that they are severely unaware of where they are living! I also had a coworker tell me that her friend, that has been living in one of their buildings for years, had her door kicked in recently, and robbed of her televisions and laptop.
When we first walked up to the building, after parking the car, I wanted to turn around, immediately! I knew it was the projects!!! The newly renovated apartments are gorgeous and would be much more in a nicer neighborhood. The pictures that you see, are of staged apartments and really presents well, INSIDE. I didn’t have a bad experience with the leasing agent showing the unit. He wasn’t pushy and he was patient. I don’t recommend this development due to its location and crime rates. We live in walking distance of the train station (Newkirk Ave ²⁄₅), which is veryyyy close to «Flatbush Gardens», and I am ready to move. Sorry. I’m not a fan of Flatbush or East Flatbush.

Uh growing up in Flatbush, I remember this place as being called Vanderveer.
It was a place that if you went near, you got your ass beat up or robbed automatically.
It is the projects. and its a massive projects at that…
Even now, every time I drive by this place there is a ton of police activity.
So no, I won’t even visit, let alone attempt to rent a spot here.

I asked the leasing office about the crime rate. Their response was check the internet.
After stopping about five different people from different buildings their response was the same. DON’T MOVE IN. FULL OF MICE, RATS AND STUPID LAZY EMPLOYEE’S THAT STEAL.
I put in an application anyway because I was desperate for housing. I quess I could have trained the rats and mice to use a litter box.
I paid the $ 50.00 fee and never got a call back. I was told they would call me back in four to five days, but never received a phone call, email or letter.
I called five or six times and either left a message on the machine or front desk girl, but never got a call back from the young latino that worked with me.

The staff is stupid and rude like I’m not paying your bills. Maintenance is lazy scummy bums who constantly stall the elevators in the basement like I’m not paying your bills. If rent isn’t paid… who pays your bills?! Everyone gets fired up in this piece if there’s no business. Am I right or am I right?! Only had one advance notice of the elevators being out in the three years that I’ve been here. Two summers ago the elevator was out for a whole month. Maintenance isn’t working THAT hard for the elevators to constantly be out of service. It’s been two days straight on a weekday at that. Many people work 9 – 5. Do what you need to do during regular business hours and stop wasting company money and my damn time. After 5pm everything needs to be in working order. It’s the hood. Definitely my last year in this piece. I don’t care if moving will effect my traveling money. I’m out this POS! They are not deserving of your money. Also some of these residents are thieving bastards playing stupid knowing good and well stealing mail is a federal offense even IF it’s in your mailbox because the postal workers are negligent. If it don’t have your name on it b*tch it ain’t yours! Put it back in rotation for the rightful owner with your broke pressed asses. Oh and YES they do charge you over $ 300 a month for having an AC unit in your window. In the dead of the night they snap photos of your windows as proof because they are grubby, money hungry, penny pinching skinflints.
Neglected, overpriced projects. Avoid at all costs.

it’s the projects… period.

I grew up here and left when these projects started to go down hill in the early 60’s! Sad to say, many years later, based on many on-​line reviews… frequent attempts to upgrade the former «Vanderveer Estates» have proven to be sub-​standard at best. Laugh at the incredibly misleading video on their website now promoting the 59-​building complex as a newly renovated, hipster spot. By all accounts, the hipsters are few and far between and the gangsters and low-​class are predominant. Management staff are frequently rude, indifferent, and love to mis-​represent their property. Avoid at all costs!