Save Yourself from being Scammed
I first moved to Chicago in the late summer of 2025 to start a graduate program. I came to the city knowing almost nobody, except for my cousins (who had their own issues with space and were not accepting roommates). I was very young at the time, and didn't have any online communities. I (obliviously) did business with Ivy Residences because my cousins advised me that (despite the company's notorious shortcomings), they were the only option that make living alone affordable in a decently safe part of Chicago. I was warned upfront that there were multiple expenses I'd have to cover in addition to the base rent.
Let's start there, shall we? The base rent is never as it's advertised on the company's website. Ivy is one of two renting companies that dominates the Hyde Park area of Chicago. They have a multitude of buildings, and you'll click on one with enticingly low-cost options. Then, when you inquire about the unit, they will let you know that the rent is (at least) $200 more than what it's advertised as on their website. Oh well, you think. I guess that's still decently affordable in comparison to any other guaranteed housing option in Chicago.
Now, onto the other additional charges.
Utilities are capped at $80/month, but that doesn't include the $17.95 " monthly service fee", so you can count on utilities being around $100/month. This, after being busy with other life demands and spending less than half of your week at your unit. Water, gas, and electricity are all separate charges. All this does not include internet, which you have to seek out yourself, install, and pay an additional monthly charge for, estimably $40/month. Xfinity is the only provider available in the area, and they have problems of their own. But that’s another story for another day.
There is a deposit charge and a “move-in fee” of $350. Seems strange when you’re responsible for moving in all on your own and no actual services are provided here.
Laundry is done through a unit in the building, which is serviced by an app (CleanPlay mobile). $2 to wash and $2 to dry; but the app makes you load at least $10 at a time.
If you have an urgent need, such as, pest control, running water, or basic heating services in the winter, and you find that these services are curiously unavailable (which is a VERY frequent occurrence), good luck getting ahold of anyone in the office. You’ll be directed to one voicemail after another, and then probably hear back hours later if you’re lucky enough to hear back at all. When I first moved in, I was a little frazzled by the conditions of the building. The elevator creaks very loudly, and it hasn’t passed inspection since three years ago. The stairwell is literally crumbling so that there are actual pools on the landings every time it rains (see photo attached). Of course, I never heard back the one time I tried to raise a concern about this. While some maintenance requests are responded to, others go ignored completely and are simply marked as “resolved” on the resident portal. This is what happened when my building lost heat for longer than three days when the outside temps were 20-30° F. Leaving residents without heat for three days (72 hours) is actually illegal according to Illinois law, but if you want to get out of your lease (which is, as you’ve realized by now, a total scam), you will have to find a lawyer and pay for that yourself because the company will bypass Chicago law and not allow a lease termination. Unfortunately, hiring a lawyer is not a possibility when every drop of your earnings (at an entry-level job, above minimum wage) are being sucked away by rent and fees. During this heat outage, an email was sent out to residents to the effect of “an emergency service ticket has been put in, but maintenance cannot obtain the required parts to fix the boiler until tomorrow. We apologize for any inconvenience”. Which “apology” felt like salt on the wound. It was not for another two days and two nights of cold and headaches that the heating was actually restored (I have emails to prove this).
There’s a popular phrase “You get what you pay for,” which I could’ve said was true about business with Ivy, but it is not. With Ivy, you won’t even get what you pay for.
In the less than a year that I’ve lived as an Ivy tenant, I’ve had at least five water shut offs, which took several hours to be restored. One instance, I was left without hot water for two days. In the other instances, I was left without water entirely (for a span of 2-5 hours). I understand that things happen in older buildings, but the sad thing is that I’ve had to be the one to bring outages to the company’s attention. When I strode into the office, after the usual lack of response via phone, the staff was utterly clueless that there was an outage in their building; much more clueless as to why. When the company has 20+ buildings to manage, what makes entitled people like me think that they’d care about residents in a particular one of their buildings?
Then there are the bugs. Earwigs galore, despite keeping my place very clean and never leaving any food out in the open. Occasionally, “pest control” spraying an are done in the building, but the insecticides used are free of chemicals (which means they’re utterly useless). You find that living alone was a scam; you are actually forced to expect about 5-10 different roommates a month (more if there’s been a recent change of season). Roommates with earwigs that crawl on your skin and don’t pay a dollar toward the untoward renting charges. Delightful. The best explanation management can offer about the bug infestations is that “it’s an old building.” Perhaps that’s why there’s an abundance of colorful mold in your unit’s bathroom too.
Last thing on the subject of basic needs, if you want air conditioning in the summer (when temperatures in Chicago reach above 90° F), you will be responsible for buying an A/C unit yourself and then paying to have it installed AND uninstalled when you move out. If you have three fans running full blast, it’ll hardly touch the strangling fingers of humidity. Of course, by the time this event came, it was a month before I was scheduled to move out. It wouldn’t have been worth the hundreds (or possibly thousands) of dollars to install the unit AND the hundreds of dollars to get it uninstalled upon my move-out date. If you don’t want to die of heatstroke and suffer from sleepless deliriums, you had better have made some very kind friends that let you stay with them. Renting with Ivy means paying north of $1,200 a month for a place that is often uninhabitable.
One “commodity” I did not pay for was a $200/month parking space. If you have a car, you can find street parking about 1/10 times, or else you’ll drive around a couple of blocks 3-4 times and waste an exorbitant amount of money on gas.
I find it also important to mention that the day of my move in, the unit was not ready as promised. I spent hours waiting in the office for the front desk person to find my keys, and then, upon entering, found that my unit was still being cleaned from the previous resident (who had literally left used Q-tips on the floor). I had been told that my unit would be ready days in advance. I had given plenty of notice about my move-in date and paid all fees well in advance.
The company does sporadic inspections and (ineffective) pest control services, which feel like an invasion of privacy. Regarding their pest control services, they send out an email to residents essentially saying that everything must be removed from cabinets and shelves if the unit is to receive pest control services. Then, days after the service was scheduled, after you’ve gone through hours of trouble tearing apart your unit and putting everything back together again, you’ll receive a knock at your door. Come to find out that pest control services were two days late because management failed to provide them with the keys to your unit on the specified date. You will also receive notice after notice saying that there is “action required” on your resident portal for renewing your lease. You will receive about 50 emails to this effect, even after you state in your resident portal that you will not be renewing the lease. You will also be informed that the company may be entering and showing your unit to potential buyers within 60 days of your move. Anything damaged or not perfectly cleaned will be fined to you upon your move out. Likely, you will be charged for damages that maintenance services have left unresolved.
You can also expect trouble with other residents. Residents who are disrespectful and steal every package that can’t fit in the mailbox or Amazon lockers. Other residents who leer creepily at you in the hallways if you happen to be out at night. Ivy residences has no security whatsoever. In lieu of keeping security cameras in the lobbies, the best they can do is send out emails to the effect of “be courteous and do not steal other people’s packages” (which of course no thieves are going to bother to read).
Save yourself thousands of dollars and find a private landlord. Go on Facebook Marketplace. Go with literally ANY other option! Independent renting entities might also come with their shares of shadiness and hidden charges, but at least you might have better luck with services actually being provided.