Washington Intern Student Housing

My institution has partnered with WISH on program housing; I have stayed there for two different years and perhaps got better treatment because of that standing business relationship. Location in Capitol Hill, which is great. The house is liveable, but gross.

WISH needs to be prodded by tenants to fix things. Our bedroom and kitchen had exposed wiring when we moved in. Once came in to review black mold in the vents; denied there was any mold. Instead of reinstalling a drawer in our bathroom, they replaced the entire fixture, leaving a three-inch crack in the drywall that remained for a week. The decks are rickety and WISH just told us not to use them.

Despite charging tenants "cleaning fees," the house was not at all clean when we arrived. Crumbs over the floor, food in the couches, grime and rust over the kitchenware that we had to get replaced. I don't walk anywhere in the house without shoes. Bathrooms have mold in the showers; fixtures tend to need repair. No bug problems, though.

WIFI was fine, though tended to go out sporadically. Heating/AC is surprisingly effective/responsive except in one or two rooms. The repair staff are contractors, I believe, but I've never seen anybody over the age of 27 working in the WISH office. The office apparently does not give payment receipts; you must ask for one specifically over the phone. Contacted me twice about payments I had already submitted (hence why I wanted a receipt).

It's expensive, but the location is good and I didn't have to worry about a 12-month lease for just a semester. With WISH you're paying (generally) for location and ease.

Horrible!!!!!! The Woodley Park location has failed to provide us with adequate air conditioning on days where it has been 90+ degrees out leaving my space to be at the highest 85 degrees indoors. They have failed to adequately fix this issue.

Our daughter was initially going to stay at one of their residences. But her internship location changed, and we could not use their services. I canceled well before the deadline back in April via email paper trail and speaking to office personnel. We initially paid $625 as a placeholder knowing that we would get $200 back if we did not move forward with the summer housing. To date, and it is the end of June, several emails and phone calls later promising they were going to send a check for $200, nothing has shown up. WISH is not to be trusted.

This review may sound dated, but okay, I saw that Yelp had this place, and I was like, I have to review this!

I lived in a WISH (Washington Intern Student Housing) Woodley Park apartment for 4 months in the spring of 2011 (January to April) while I was interning in Washington, DC. I lived with five other guys, sharing a bedroom with one of them. The living situation is what it is, there are two bathrooms, so the mornings can be rough when you are trying to get ready for work in the morning. I was also in a bedroom towards the back, so we were awoken each Monday by the garbage trucks doing their thing. They were loud. Really loud.

The furniture there is adequate for student needs. The photos you see pretty much sum up what to expect in terms of that. I liked that in the basement there was a computer lab that you could use at any time to get your work done. I definitely took full advantage of that. I guess I saw the laundry facilities are free now. When I lived there we had to pay to use the washer and dryer.

The location was excellent. It is really close to the Woodley Park Metro stop, and is only a few blocks away from the National Zoo. Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle were also really close by. If you want to do some grocery shopping, there is a Giant really close to the Van Ness Metro stop, which is where I did 99% of all my grocery shopping.

I also felt really safe and secure here. All the rooms and the building itself were key-fob activated, so you could not really get too far without it. The guards were also really friendly. So as long as you showed your ID when you walked in, they were always amiable to letting you through. Package delivery and mail were also really easy and seamless. Not to mention the guest policy if you had a guest stay with you (which I had).

While not the most glamorous, it served my needs well. I hope it serves your needs the same.

I have been waiting a really long time to write this Yelp review. This apartment building levels on being absolutely disgusting. I stayed at the Congressional Apartments in the Capitol Hill area of D.C. for their first fall semester. The housing is furnished with mostly interns and other college students staying at the place. With that being said the housing is incredibly gross. When I moved in there was stuff everywhere in the bathroom, black gluck all over the drain and it was just all around nasty. The A.C barely worked or if it did not correctly. The space is small for the price paid to stay the couple of months. In my opinion it is extremely overpriced and if you're looking for housing in D.C look in another direction. Multiple times from the apartments poor upkeep things were continually breaking and the water was shut off for the whole building multiples time with little to no warning. The office staff is also pretty unprofessional with little to no actual problem solving capability or actual customer service skills. Overall, 0/10.

I lived with WISH for the spring 2022 semester. It was a great experience with a great location, near a metro, and within walking distance to most prominent places in DC. WISH was responsive to any and all maintenance requests, the rooms were clean, and the amenities were perfect for a dorm-style living situation. I would recommend living with WISH for the convenience of the provided amenities, furniture, location, and responsive of the company.

WISH is a great company that truly cares about their residents and employees. It's sad to see so many negative reviews. WISH has an unbeatable location and a great team that goes above and beyond to resolve issues ASAP so it's residents have the best possible DC experience.

I stayed at WISH at Woodley Park for a semester in fall 2017 and had a negative experience. I would urge anyone moving to D.C. to explore other options and not go with WISH just because it's the first search result.

LOCATION: This was the one positive aspect of my stay. Woodley Park is a very safe and pleasant neighborhood, and it's conveniently located with only a short commute to downtown.

Everything else was problematic.

ROOM QUALITY/MAINTENANCE: The room was advertised to me as having been recently renovated, so I chose it over other cheaper options assuming that it would be in better condition. However, when I arrived, it quickly became clear that the apartment which was rented to me was not yet ready to be lived in. The markings of extremely shoddy/rushed renovation were everywhere, from uneven flooring to paint specks all over the furniture. Furniture such as the sofa was entirely missing, and the bad WiFi reception made it all but unusable.

I worked to resolve the fixable problems by emailing WISH, but the response was often intolerably slow. I racked up heavy mobile data charges before the WiFi was fixed. The lack of counter and storage space had become a serious point of contention between my housemates by the time our island counter was installed, months after move-in. The poorly installed heater in my room, which woke me up countless times in the middle of the night with an extremely loud rattling, took nearly a month to fix despite multiple follow up emails. I could go on.

COMMUNITY: I'm a very social person, but I found no larger social element or community at WISH outside of the people in my suite. During the academic year, many WISH residents are university students pushed into overflow housing, not interns, and they are typically not interested in becoming friends with people who don't go to their school. I went to a few of the social events, but the food/shirts typically ran out before I got there and people left after that. Beyond those, there was no lounge or other communal space at Woodley Park to meet people (unless you count the elegant but sterile lobby or the basement laundry/computer rooms), nor even something like a WISH Woodley Park Facebook group (perhaps they're afraid that if they create one, residents will organize and take collective action against them?).

OVERALL VALUE: I by no means came to WISH expecting a luxury experience--it's student housing, after all, even at WISH's exorbitant prices--but these problems added up to a fundamental failure on the part of WISH to provide the basic services which were advertised to me and for which I paid. I will not be staying there again and I recommend that you don't, either.

2 years at WISH housing, 2 terrible experiences. First year my daughter was placed in a basement apartment at Woodley. The filth was unbelievable and the stench of mold and mildew was overwhelming. There was some type of air conditioner in the room. When we turned it on, dirt started shooting out of it. The window in her room was at ground level and the workers outside the building were looking in. The elevator in the building was filled with graffiti and smelled awful. We demanded a new room. After many attempts, she was finally moved up to a renovated apartment.

The following summer she found herself back at WISH in the International House. This place is even more filthy than the other. There are roaches! An exterminator came in, without her knowing, and sprayed the apartment. She came home to dead bugs everywhere. I know this isn't a WISH problem, but her roommates are completely irresponsible. Never take out garbage, don't clean dishes, leave rotting food in refrigerator. But what is a WISH problem is for them to address this situation. Never any inspections.

I would pay more money and live anywhere other than WISH !

All around awful. Really shit to be honest. People who work there and run the palace are very unpleasant. Water outages. Owerflowing toilets. Slow Internet. What more is there to say.

Edit: I just thought I'd elaborate. A friend of mine had an 800 dollar shipment sent and there was proof that package had been signed by the staff and after they lost it they flat out said that there was nothing they could do. I'm sure if they could afford dozens of boxes of pizza every week then having a half decent apartment should be in order but they can't even do that. I'd like to say it felt like living in a 3rd world country but I think that even 3rd world countries would be insulted by that comparison. The one good thing about the coronavirus was that I was able to get out of this hell hole 2 months early.