The following essay was written by former coordinator and Apartment Life staff member, Natalie Walker.
Before I was an Apartment Life Coordinator, I was no stranger to apartment living. Being a good neighbor meant respecting noise levels in units with thin walls, not double parking in the parking garage, or saying a quick hello as we passed in the hallway.
Even though I felt like I was a fairly good neighbor, courteous and respectful, I couldn’t tell you the names of the people who lived just a few feet to my right or left.
That’s when a co-worker first told me about Apartment Life. She was a coordinator at her community, and nearly every day, she’d come to work talking about her neighbors. She was constantly hosting events, and they sounded really fun. Her neighbors called her when they needed a hand. She had friends in her community and spent time with them often.
Soon, my husband and I realized something: we wanted what she had. This was the kind of neighboring experience that we longed for. We applied to be coordinators and a few months later, we found ourselves hosting our first event, a massive pool party to kick-off summer. On a sunny Saturday in June, when I might otherwise have been binging Netflix in my apartment, I was knee deep in the shallow end of the pool tossing a beach ball with my new property manager. I was enjoying burgers with neighbors who lived just down the hall from me, and getting to know residents who, like me, were new to the community.
From there, everything changed.
Within our first few months serving as coordinators, we’d hosted a chef-led cooking demo in the club room, met up with new friends by the fire pit after work, and had the entire leasing team over to our apartment. Over the next two years, we served Saturday morning brunch, hosted game day watch parties, screened movies under the stars, passed out donuts as our neighbors headed off to work, and built relationships with dozens of local vendors who filled our community with incredible food and experiences.
We decorated our apartment lobby for the holidays, launched our beloved “Howl-o-ween” Pet Costume Contest, and showed up with gifts when our neighbors welcomed home a new baby, celebrated a promotion, or walked through a hard season. We even celebrated two residents’ engagement in the courtyard right outside our apartment.
We helped create a community where our neighbors built genuine friendships with one another and experienced a sense of belonging. After two years, our time as coordinators ended—but our new understanding of what it means to be a good neighbor didn’t. I often tell people that once you’re an Apartment Life Coordinator, it gets in your DNA. In every home since, we’ve had genuine friendships with our neighbors, received and given support and care through those relationships, and experienced firsthand the difference it makes when you choose community over isolation.
Had we never become coordinators, we might have stayed in our own little bubble without ever realizing what we were missing. I’m so glad we didn’t.
If you're ready to learn more about serving with us as an Events and Ministry Coordinator, we'd love to chat. Let's connect!