HERE Pittsburgh student apartments unfinished as school year starts

HERE Pittsburgh, an apartment building on Forbes Avenue marketed toward students with approximately 300 residential units, was originally expected to be completed before the start of the academic year. Now, move-in has been delayed until as late as mid-October for some residents, causing students to scramble to find a place to live.

“We know you are probably disappointed, and we are, too,” HERE Pittsburgh wrote in an email to its residents. “We want your experience with HERE Pittsburgh to be perfect, and this isn’t how we wanted to start our exciting journey as a community.”

HERE Pittsburgh describes itself as “a modern student apartment community that uniquely combines edgy vibes, iconic design, and classic college experiences.” CA Ventures, the Chicago-based management group behind HERE Pittsburgh, announced the building’s delay in tandem with a property they own near the University of Minnesota, where 573 people have signed a lease. HERE Pittsburgh did not respond to answer how many leases have been signed with them.

The building, which has been in planning since 2020, currently estimates that tenants will be able to move in between early September and mid-October, depending on the floor they live on.

HERE Pittsburgh gave tenants two options to compensate living expenses during the delay. Option No. 1 provides both a temporary rent abatement and $150 in gift cards per day to residents until they move in. However, tenants would be required to find their own living accommodations until then.

Option No. 2 provides tenants with alternate living accommodations in the form of hotel rooms and $40 in gift cards per day until they move into HERE Pittsburgh, but also requires them to continue paying rent during the delay according to their lease agreement. 

Without a timeline estimating when their apartments would be finished, residents were given two days to choose between the options.

University spokesperson Jared Stonesifer encourages students looking for housing accommodations to search on Pitt’s Off-Campus Living website.

“We are here to support our students who may be impacted by this situation. Anyone wishing to contact the University about this matter is encouraged to email deanofstudents@pitt.edu to connect with staff,” Stonesifer says.

A statement from CA Ventures Management Team says they are “terribly disappointed” by HERE Pittsburgh’s delay, adding, “In the meantime, our singular goal is to communicate to our residents to the best of our ability and provide the support we can to each of them.”

Hailey Garza, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University, signed a lease for a studio apartment with HERE Pittsburgh last winter.

“The main thing was location and convenience. They’re a bit pricey, but being right on Forbes was a big selling point for me,” Garza said. “It just seemed really nice and like a place to live off campus so I didn’t have to live on campus to get that kind of security and stuff.”

Garza, a drama student who worked in Michigan this summer, says the news of her apartment’s delay was “a bit stressful.”

“I’m currently working out of state so I had to call my parents, luckily it was my day off so I actually had time to deal with this because normally I wouldn’t have the time,” Garza said. “So I took most of that day just on the phone with my parents talking over options.”

Garza even considered getting out of her lease, but a stipulation in her agreement says the tenant can only end their lease if the unit is not available 90 days after the scheduled move-in date.

Her parents, who live in Arizona, bought non-refundable tickets to help their daughter move in before learning about the apartment’s delayed construction. Now Garza says she’ll have to move in without her parents’ support.

“It’s the emotional factor I guess, you always want your parents there to move you into your first apartment and now mine won’t be able to and I’ll have to, you know, just be a big girl and do that myself,” Garza said.

Although Garza picked Option No. 1 and booked an Airbnb until her estimated mid-to-late September move-in date, she expressed concern for other HERE Pittsburgh residents.

“I mean, this building has 10 floors, tons of people on each floor,” Garza said. “There are a lot of people who are being misplaced right now.”

Suniska Prathipati, a HERE Pittsburgh resident, describes the situation her apartment put her in as “really frustrating.”

“If they had let us know how long the delay was going to be and then told us to make a decision I really would have appreciated that,” Prathipati said. “But it didn’t really feel like they cared about our well-being, it seemed like they only care about keeping us in our contract.”

Prathipati, a sophomore business and political science major, signed a lease with her roommate, junior marketing major Arjun Manjunath, last winter for a two-bedroom unit. Prathipati was drawn in by the prospect of a new, spacious apartment with promising amenities while Manjunath liked HERE Pittsburgh’s location as well as the efficient leasing process.

When Manjunath first heard news of the apartment’s delay, he said he was “not surprised.”

“My friends had been sending progress pictures over the summer,” Manjunath says. “Construction looked slow from the outside, so I wasn’t confident it would be done.”

Since the delay was announced, Manjunath has appreciated HERE Pittsburgh’s communication with residents.

“I am content with the level of communication the building has provided with us, they answer phone calls and respond to emails pretty fast,” Manjunath said.

Prathipati, however, says she received conflicting information from HERE Pittsburgh about the requirement to continue paying rent in Option No. 2. From the building’s original email, Prathipati believed that if she selected Option No. 2, she would still have to pay rent as outlined in her lease.

“I wanted to double check that I was understanding that right, and when I called they told me no, you don’t have to pay rent, your rent would be prorated,” Prathipati says. “And then they kind of went back and forth in a couple of different emails between me and them where they were like, yes you do have to pay rent, no it’s prorated, no it’s a different amount and stuff like that.”

CA Ventures did not respond to a request for comment on these emails.

Prathipati and Manjunath ultimately both picked Option No. 1 and will live at an Airbnb until their estimated move-in date in mid-to-late September, but Prathipati wishes that HERE Pittsburgh handled the delay better.

“I just think the whole thing wasn’t handled in a super organized manner, and I wish that they would have been a little more considerate to the fact that we are students and for a lot of us, this is our first time living off campus and we don’t have meal plans and we’re basically fending for ourselves now,” Prathipati said. “I think that if you’re a company that markets themselves for students and as student living, that should be something you take into consideration, and I don’t think they really did that.”