Review for The Timbers Apartments

My boyfriend and I lived at the Timbers Apartments for about 2 1/2 years. During this time we recieved no noise complaints and always paid our rent on time. Over the years we acquired two dogs, a dachshund/chihuahua mix and a standard poodle. Both are good dogs who do not bark when alone in the apartment.
A week or so after we got the dogs the Timbers decided to change their pet policy. They did not seem thrilled that we'd acquired our newest addition (an elderly standard poodle), and made it a point to walk by and "spy" on us during all hours of the day. At one point someone walked by and my small dog barked at them. It was literally NO big deal and he quited down after about 5 seconds. Not a minute later we got a knock on a door from management saying that this was our "first warning" concerning our dogs.

The second warning came when our geriatric dog had diarrhea and despite her best efforts did not make it to the pet area in time. We cleaned up the evidence but a maintenance worker (they also do a lot of "spying") decided to report us and we were given yet another warning.

This happened one more time where our elderly dog pottied in the "wrong area". Even though we had bags on hand and always made sure to clean up after the mess we were told that we had recieved a final warning.

We were evicted early in November (right around the Holidays, which was horrible) and given 20 days to vacate the premises. We asked for a reason behind the eviction after having a squeaky clean record besides the few minor incidents with the dogs. They informed us that they do not "legally" need to give us a reason.

Recently we recivied paperwork from The Timbers which indicated that we are not getting our deposits back (equalling about 800 bucks) and that we owe them 100 bucks for the painting they had to do to our apartment and general repairs. My boyfriend and I had bought paint ourselves and repainted the place as good as new, there was no reason for them to charge us this extra 200 dollar fee.

A lot of people we know were taken advantage of and have not filed a complaint or taken any action against this dishonest business. I do not recommend this apartment complex to ANYONE who has animals or expects prompt response from maintenace or management concerning any important issues.

Sounds like the owning company is looking to convert to condos, so is finding excuses to evict. They figured your dogs would allow them to claim problems that you would have a hard time disproving in court. I've been looking online at places in both the Seattle and the Olympia areas (just checked into this place because the same owners just bought the one fairly run complex in Olympia), and it seems a general rule in WA for the mgmt. to engage in move out scams where they keep the deposit and charge add'l for unnecessary work. My guess is that since these complexes are run by professional mgmt companies who are not usually the owners, they pocket the stolen amounts and don't give the money to the owners. If someone does take them to court, it would be the owners who would be liable. Nice side business. The ironic thing is they couldn't do this in slummy subsidized housing, because there are tenants rights advocates for the poor. Washington state desperately needs better tenant laws and enforcement. I live in NYS, and they couldn't get away with that here.