Project Sentinel

My experience with Project Sentinel wasn’t too good. Maybe they are helpful to others but not to me. Mediation is not always the solution.

Do yourself a favor and don’t use this agency if you are needing HUD counseling for a Reverse Mortgage. They are not the least bit helpful, bordering on rude and disrespectful. They wanted me to jump through a million hoops that were not necessary. It was good to find a company that was willing to be helpful. Project Sentinel was not it!

I had a Project Sentinel arranged mediation, then I was told by the other party that Proj. Sentinel manipulated and instigated the unnecessary dispute between two Boy, we are so wrong about their «integrity» and this is accidentally made through the other party’s discovered comments. Is Proj. Sentinel’s way to «PROMOTE» their business in order to get funding from local, state, federal governments by creating «disputes» to log in their clients and time spent to BENEFIT themselves and their business?

My appreciation goes out to Maya P. from Project Sentinel/Housing.org in helping to explain legalities of California housing code to us and helping with challenges that we had with our landlord.
Maya was very friendly and courteous, listened carefully to our issues and spent time to explain the law to us. She responded to phone-​calls and emails rather quickly at no charge.
Thankfully, we did not need to move to mediation.
For the negative reviews, let me paste this description that was sent to me:
«We are a neutral, non-​profit agency and as such do not advocate for either tenants or landlords, and I am afraid that you might have misunderstand who we are and what we do. Our job is to in a neutral fashion educate both of you on the California Civil Codes, to the extent to which they apply to a particular situation, as well as counsel of practical approaches to solving your problems. We do not interpret what is in the lease and suggest use of lawyers for getting clarity on specific language.»

Horrible customer service. Snotty, aggressive French woman who interrupted me constantly and seemed to take the landlord’s side completely. Awful! Like the other reviewer said, RUN! You will hang up feeling 100x worse about your situation.

Was referred to this company after moving out of my apartment in Santa Clara and the leasing office did not return any of my deposit (which has never happened to me before upon move-​out) and also charged me an excessive amount for paint with no receipts.
It took me forever to even get to speak to someone after constantly being transferred to someone who was never there and leaving voicemails. Once I did get ahold of someone, it seemed very difficult for her to understand what my issue was. After following there advice to first email the property and make a formal request to have my deposit refunded, the property refused (which I already knew what happened after speaking to them upon not receiving my deposit back) and so Project Sentinel said next step would be mediation. They were to contact the property directly and inform them that I wanted to being the mediation process since they would not refund my deposit.
It has been a few days shy of a month since this has happened and I have not heard a single word back from Project Sentinel via phone call or e-​mail. Thoroughly disappointed and now have no idea of how to proceed with my issue and getting back hundreds of dollars worth of a deposit I am entitled to.

RUN Fast… this company has managed to fax paper work to loan processor twice since ⁸⁄₂₀₀₉. Never returns phone calls, have yet to receive any information about my issue. Still has HUD Certification, but employees say they have 500+ loan modifications each. Our processor sent one letter says no, and Project Sentinel says «we can not help you any more» No assistance in finding a rental with poor credit, no assistance in finding our investor or why we are denied, nothing. Wish I could do no stars.

This is the mediation group I contacted when I discovered bedbugs in my Sunnyvale apartment. Their services are free. They are very professional and knowledgeable. They let me know what my rights were and even contacted the property owner on my behalf with a possible resolution. I got a call from the property manager and was able to terminate my lease within 30 minutes! Prior to that, I was begging them for days to let me out of my lease. Knowledge truly is power. And I didn’t even need to hire a lawyer or go to small claims court.
Highly recommended!