At this point, it is a canon experience for first-year college students everywhere to live in housing that is suspect at best. No matter where one goes to school, as a freshman in the dorm, you can be rest assured to encounter residential hardships.
Students often encounter black mold in their vents, are forced to live in a shoebox with the messiest person they have ever met and watch in shock as a late-night pub crawler does their best Bruce Lee impression on a helpless exit sign. Escape from these difficult conditions encountered in the dorm is offered in the form of off-campus commercial housing that students can choose to live in for the remainder of college after the completion of their first year.
Oftentimes, however, these conditions are not as easily escaped as the flashy websites and upscale marketing of these off-campus residences would lead you to believe. Rather, they
serve as a template for the years to come for many students seeking asylum from the horrors of their first year.
Some students successfully escape these dark days and bask in the luxurious and secluded atmosphere of high-tier and high-price-tag off-campus residencies, like Arcadia and Magnolia. Others find themselves less fortunate and are condemned to a hellscape of drab-colored walls, dated shag carpeting and a genuine fear to walk from their apartment to their car to get an item they forgot.
My hunt to label the single worst off-campus apartment complex in Milledgeville quickly narrowed to two locations, which find themselves neck-and-neck in a tightly-contested race to the bottom. These are the Bellamy at Milledgeville and the Revelry Flats.
Revelry Flats and the Bellamy find themselves in an area of Milledgeville that received an ‘F’ grade for violent crime according to Crime Grade’s interactive city map, meaning that these apartment complexes are both situated in an area that is as bad as it gets for the prevalence of crimes that involve serious physical harm of the victim. This fact becomes even more concerning in light of the fact that the residential body of Revelry has nearly an even split of local residents and college students, a mix with a poor historical precedent of innate tension and unsuccessful coexistence. The possibilities are both endless and potentially disastrous.
Along with Revelry’s questionable location geographically, residents regularly encounter problems with the infrastructure of the apartments they reside in. Anecdotal accounts detail occurrences like massive water leaks that flood multiple apartments along with ineffective efforts of the housing office to remediate them. One Google review of the facility by a former resident cites frequent roach infestations, faulty appliances and black mold that was present upon move-in, with no effort from housing to address his concerns.
As one looks further into the matter, this poor review begins to be corroborated by other residents’ similar tidings and an equally-poor review from a local guide who speaks extensively about the unresponsiveness of management to many problems brought to them by residents.
Across the railroad tracks, “Smellamy,” as it is often referred to by its student residents, has a bizarre melting pot of residents in its own respect. This complex houses many GC students, almost all of the Georgia Military College football players and yes, you guessed it, an ever-present and always-pungent odor of marijuana filling its courtyard, corridors and parking lot.
Although falling into an area with an equally-high presence of violence, unlike Revelry, Bellamy has a privacy fence and gate, which you need a clicker or guest code to enter. The only problem is that this gate never works and mounts about as effective of a defense of the complexes parameters as the Capitol Hill Police did of defending Congress from the Jan. 6 invaders.
Bellamy is quite drab on the inside, and the three different, but equally-dingy, shades of cream coloring of the bathroom are sure to make almost any resident question their sanity from time to time. The anecdotal accounts of living here document furniture missing upon arrival, unruly and noisy residents and an army of roaches that are omnipresent in one’s living space — not to mention the frequent urgent-situation visits from the Milledgeville Police Department.
Revelry Flats certainly has the edge on Bellamy in the rent department, as it costs around $550-600 per person per month plus utilities in a three-bedroom apartment. Four- bedroom apartments in Bellamy cost around $620-650 plus utilities, according to their respective websites.
Given the fact that Revelry is less secure and possesses many of the same maintenance problems that Bellamy does, I believe that it takes the cake as the worst off-campus residency in Milledgeville. However, I would do yourself a favor and avoid both of these like the plague of roaches you are sure to encounter should you decide to live in either of them.
