I'm living at Valley View Independent Living. The staff is pretty good. They take me to my Veterans Administration appointments, either to see a doctor or an outside physician. They like to talk to you about what's going on with you (What do you need today? Do you need your room cleaned? Do I need this or that?). What they're trying to tell me is that they're available if I have any problems with whatever. Any time during breakfast, the noon meal, or the afternoon meal, they're up to the standard. I have three square meals a day. It's something that I wasn't doing before and now I'm doing it. Overall, I like it here, at least for right now. This is an old facility. It was built back in the 90s. This one is for independent living and the other one over on the other side is for assisted living and for people who are having mental issues or mental problems or they're in worse condition. I go out for a walk around the facility. With regards to the food, they give you whatever you request. You can have up to three or four eggs if you want, over easy or scrambled, you have bacon, ham, and pancakes and it's not very sweet. I eat eggs and they don't come in with any kind of salt or pepper or anything except you to do it yourself. I eat in the comfort of my room, and then I watch TV while I'm eating breakfast or the noon meal. We have a workout class. We have small weights and we do exercise from 10:30 to about 11:15 in the morning. We have bingo, and outings and they take us to Wal-Mart and the local grocery stores here. I like to go walking around the whole complex here and do some stuff in my room on my own. Not too many people are using a walking device or a vehicle or whatever to drive them around. We only have the activity at noon and it's indoors. This place doesn't have a walking trail. There are a lot of trees, but they are in the front.

Valley View has two sections, assisted living and independent living. I went to the independent living section. It's nice and the rooms are roomier. They're bigger than the other communities I visited and they looked very spacious. And they have a microwave, stove, and it comes with everything. I liked it a lot. There's a dining room and I didn't eat there at that time, because it wasn't feeding time. But everything looks so nice. They have coffee pots going on all through the day and night if you want coffee. I asked the lady, what if they keep going all the time and she said "Yes, they can. We constantly have decaf and regular." They almost sold me there. I thought the place was nice, decent, clean and the staff is great. And I like that. The price is just right. The only drawback for me is that it's in Harlingen, though I have nothing against Harlingen. But I have no complaints about anything and I was surprised by the big rooms they have. It's really nice, it's just not like living in a small apartment. It's like living in a house. The facilities, the room, the people, the dining area, the landscape, everything I rate very high. They have good people there.

I have lived at Valley View Independent Living for over 2 years. The facility is nice and friendly with a home atmosphere. Even though meals and light house cleaning is included in the rent all apartments have a fully equipped kitchen. House cleaning and linen laundry is done weekly. There are 2 laundry rooms where we do our personal laundry at no charge. We have 3 meals a day where we can order the entree of the day however there are misc. meals we can order if the main entree isn’t to our liking. COVID was difficult for all of us no matter. Where you lived but was handled as safely and good as was possible.

Horrible place. As soon they instituted a lock down due to Covid-19, all amenities ended. When it was lifted all amenities were never reinstated. Food would arrive cold. I was told by my parents, other residents and family members of other residents that the main food was beans and tortillas. One family member told me this grandmother got a hotdog and bread for a "meal". Meals are apart of the monthly costs which were about $9.00 per meal. My parents apartment flooded anytime there was a heavy rain. They only put gutter guards on to keep leaves out of the drain pipe. They have no intentions of fixing it. The transportation that was suppose to be part of the package is non existent. They were told they were not allowed to visit in other residents apartments or socializing in the hallways. There were some items left behind and my mother went back to get them and they were gone. I spoke to Lillie and she told me there was nothing left in the apartment and then all that was left was trash. I will be filing a police report for theft is the items are not returned by tomorrow. My mother had that apartment to a certain date and the stuff missing was prior to the last day of her contract. Oh I forgot, housekeeping that is suppose to happen once a week only happened once every 2 weeks because they only have one house keeper for all of the apartments.

Out of the three places I visited, Valley View would be the one I would pick because it's more like an apartment rather than a couple of rooms. It's very nice and they have ground floor apartments. The place and the people there felt warmer. The staff showed me around and they were really great. When we went into one apartment, the workers were redoing it, and they were so nice and very thorough. I really liked the kitchen. It wasn't like some of the others that look like a closet with a stove. The kitchen, the balconies, and the space were a draw for me. I really liked the place. The only thing they didn't have was covered parking. The food was very good. They have arts and they take them places. I would recommend them. The residents were great.

We are moving to Canterbury gardens. It is nice and the people are wonderful. The entire structure is probably quite old but they kept it pretty well and they have a lot of renovations to it. The amenities are good. The apartment has a lot of glass and a lot of visibility. They have two outside screened-in balconies that you can use. They’ve got transportation to the doctors and shopping once or twice a week. They have Bingo and once a month they have a special meal in the club. We were invited even though we were not yet residents.