In this podcast, researchers speak with residents and staff to navigate the downplayed truth that lies within the nation's largest developer, owner, and manager of high-quality student housing communities (otherwise known as American Campus Communities, or A.C.C.). Why and how is there a pattern of lawful interference, safety violations, and questionable marketing? And what is the company's secret to success, despite conflict?
FIndings
Researchers found that much of the issue has to do with management, location, and occupancy availability. Much like a domino effect, the way management handles their employees impacts the way employees handle residents. In addition, though an interviewee claims A.C.C. has become increasingly corporate, it is important to note that A.C.C. is in fact a corporation. According to an exclusive interview with realtor and professor John Baen, "apartment owners are not there to satisfy students necessarily."
Management has various roles. One of those roles is to maximize shareholder or beneficiary value. In other words they need to manage the properties and keep them full. If customer service is bad then residents are likely encouraged to go somewhere else. So if there are multiple negative reviews about A.C.C.'s customer service, then why do these properties continue to thrive at high capacity?
Answer: Occupancy availability. According to Baen, the Denton, Texas area has small occupancy availability, which means rent will remain costly and students have little choice but to accept fate because there is nowhere else to go. As Baen explains it, "Student housing communities are not entirely taking advantage of college students, but rather the economy and inflation."
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The speakers
Host: Chanel Young
Guests: Ayden Runnels, Emily Bailey, Anonymous
The Podcast
The Transcript
Chanel 0:00
American campus communities, or A.C.C. for short, was founded by Bill Bayless who began his career as a resident assistant in 1984. Later, he used his passion to create the A.C.C. we know today – the nation's largest developer, owner and manager of high-quality student housing communities. With its $9.9 billion total enterprise value, A.C.C. owns 203 total communities, 99 on-campus developments, and 93 campuses, including Denton, Texas communities like City Parc, Uptown, and UCenter, all of which include professional on-site management and maintenance and 24/7 on-call staff... or at least that's what the company website claims.
A.C.C. paints itself as the perfect student housing developer. But beneath this positive exterior lies deception, financial abuse, and even lawsuits. According to the A.C.C's website, the company's goal is to deliver the best possible experience for students. In fact, the company's tagline is "where students love living." But almost every student resident has a roommate horror story, but UCenter residents like Emily Bailey have stories that go beyond horror. Emily was forced to randomly room with a woman who made her living situation put her very own life in jeopardy. And the way A.C.C. handled it can be questionable for others.
Emily 1:26
From September to October, we had a dangerous roommate situation where we got paired with a stranger. Then she started bringing this guy over, and we found out he had gotten out of jail recently. She would have him stay here three or four nights in a row, and she didn't ask us. So he was always here. Sometimes he was here without her. [One night] he was here without her, and he got locked out. He started screaming outside our front door. He was banging on it and he was threatening to break it down. Finally, she came 30 minutes later and let him in. He was standing right outside my bedroom door. It was 3 a.m. – this is what woke me up – he started screaming, cussing us out, like, blaming us for not letting him in.
Chanel 2:08
During the traumatic incident, Emily had called the apartment's 24-hour on-call desk and was connected to a courtesy officer who did not show much courtesy. Instead of arriving to ensure safety of the roommates, the officer refused to come and told them to take it to the police, who then told the girls to take the issue to their apartment. After going back and forth, Emily's father took matters into his own hands.
Emily 2:35
So then my dad had to get a lawyer, and the lawyer listed everything that we did that should have led to them evicting my roommate. And apparently they should have evicted her by then based on the lease and all the violations she had done. So, only the lawyer's letter is what made management finally a victor. And even then, [management] didn't check up on us to make sure she left, so she actually stayed two days after she should have been out. She got two eviction warnings and stayed two extra days because she knew that management didn't work on the weekends, so she knew they wouldn't catch her. Management still owes me $200 because the courtesy officer told me and my roommates to stay in a hotel for a few nights while she was being evicted, because he didn't know how she'd react. So instead of offering to protect us, he just told us to stay in hotel. So, my lawyer asked management to refund us or prorate our rent for the nights in the hotel. The bill was about $200, and [management] told me that they would, or they told my lawyer they would give me a $200 Visa gift card to pay us back. They still haven't.
Chanel 3:43
This is not the first time lawyers have gotten involved with A.C.C. That company once faced a major lawsuit due to deceptive marketing. A.C.C. was found guilty and suffered a loss of thousands of dollars around the year 2018. The company paid $444,775 to deceived plaintiffs, along with $40,000 to cover the administrative cost, $125,000 in attorneys fees, and $5,000 to the named plaintiff Brian Fellows. Many students do not hear much about cases like this, but City Parc residents like Ayden are more than familiar with these practices. And Aiden made his feelings for the community very clear.
Ayden 4:29
I wish I never lived here. I feel preyed upon. I toured with a friend and they made it seem affordable and roomy and nice. It wasn't any of that.
Chanel 4:42
Ayden has been trying to get a renewed lease for the summer, which can be complicated because most leases there are a 12 month lease. After turning down Ayden's request, they offered him a different lease that was inaccurate. It took months of Ayden sending emails in hopes to hear from management to finally get an accurate summer lease. Since then, he hasn't heard the last of it.
Ayden 5:04
Every single day, every single day between me first asking for a summer lease and now, they've sent me emails at least once a day, sometimes twice a day... emails about resigning the lease that they had sent me saying, like, "sign it now, sign it now, sign this, sign this, sign this." I never got solid explanation. There was never a time where they told me this is why it's being so difficult, or this is why it could just be that management is just hard to reach and they misunderstood. But I do know they are very aggressive.
Chanel 5:41
And just like Emily, Ayden has had his fair share of safety violations and traumatic experiences with A.C.C.
Ayden 5:48
There was one time where the lock on our door broke, so the door was basically open for anybody to walk in. [Management] brought over a service guy, and he realized that he couldn't fix it on the spot, so he left my door without a lock. When I came home, there was a hole in the door where the lock should be. They eventually put a manual lock on it temporarily. But there was a good couple of hours when my door had a hole in it, and anybody who was walking by could have just, like, not only could they have walked in, but they would have known that they were able to walk in.
Chanel 6:24
That was not Ayden's only safety concern. Just a few weeks after moving in Ayden woke up with mold directly across his face from his bedroom ceiling, and it took management two weeks to show up and get rid of the bacteria. Keep in mind, exposure to mold can cause serious health problems. But Ayden claims his most traumatic experience with A.C.C. was when he suffered a concussion in a car wreck outside of the leasing center. And the property's resident officer response was rather unique.
Ayden 6:54
She didn't really handle the situation. The officer just kind of kept telling me to get my car out of the way of the leasing center. And I didn't want to move my car outside. I wanted to take pictures of the damage and things like that. But she was just kind of telling me that I need to move my car to the side, almost like it was kind of a distraction, not really like an issue... So that's what I would say definitely factored into how much they care about safety. I would definitely say there was a lot of mental stress. It's been increasingly, increasingly more corporate.
Chanel 7:26
So why is there an ongoing trend of ethical concerns from residents towards A.C.C? According to an A.C.C. employee with a leasing position, who has requested to be anonymous, it all circles back to management and the higher-ups. The source offered an inside scoop, claiming they do not offer much support to their employees, which makes it challenging to supervise as a result of being understaffed. Because of this, the property's employees are expected to do more than what the job description entails. For example, social media marketing is not included in the job description of a leasing position. Yet these workers are required to do so without additional pay or benefits, says the source. This also applies to the maintenance team. The maintenance shortage leads to their very many alleged false promises, claiming that things are getting done when they are, in fact, not. All of the shortage limits the employees interaction with the residents.
The source says, "it is really hard for us employees to continue to promise the residents what they see online and what they're wanting to see from living with us when we're basically just running at bare minimum speed. It kind of just leaves us in a weird spot." In addition, the source says workers are at a disadvantage because they're thrown into complex properties with a lack of proper training. But what if certain A.C.C. properties were not understaffed? Well, the source suggests it may not be any different. Back when the property was once fully staffed, a worker still expressed dissatisfaction toward management, saying, "I just think some people have different managing styles. And unfortunately, we just were not given the better end of the stick."
Our reporters reached out to the management team, but management has yet to respond and allegedly encourage their employees to do the same. The anonymous worker claims, "it's really just a personal game for the management" – a game that heavily impacts its staff and residents. For the sake of location convenience, the anonymous worker and Emily intend to stay at their designated A.C.C. properties. As for Ayden, he plans to escape A.C.C. as soon as possible, and it is the debated the number of residents who will follow suit.
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