LEED apartments are a hotly debated subject what with the many problems that are common with these types of apartments. A number of comments have emerged regarding this from the point of view of people that had actually lived in these habitats.
One frequent complaint was that the air conditioning units would not go low enough to keep the inhabitants happy. At best, some residents reported being able to have as low as 73 degrees inside their home, but the desire was for something much lower. If the temperature was the largest problem, then the second had to do with the water pressure in the apartments. The LEED buildings use a water restrictor to reduce the amount of water that is consumed, but this can actually mean that more water is used rather than less. If a shower now takes three times as long to complete, then the amount of water is actually greater than seen with a normal plumbing unit.
Yet another issue that is commonly associated with the LEED type of apartments is found in the common areas that residents share. There is often no air conditioning or heating in these places for the reason that it saves expenses. In addition, the elevators in the LEED models have fewer shafts than non-LEED buildings. Most experts and residents believe that the primary motivation behind this decision was money. The extra cost of green technologies, such as solar panels, means that the builders are operating under a more limited budget and must find ways to make cuts. In a larger building, the lack of adequate elevator facilities means that residents must wait for the elevator to come back or ride in a crowded compartment. These are just a few of the problems that the tenants had to face on a daily basis.