CRS Temporary Housing

We had a great experience with CRS, and Cathi was wonderful to work with. She was always kind, responsive, and very helpful throughout our extended stay while our home was being repaired. She kept us updated, helped with our extensions, and made the whole process much easier and less stressful for our family. We truly appreciated her patience and support during a stressful time. Thank you, Cathi, for everything you did for us!

Our house was struck by lightning, which caused a fire and severe house damage. CRS Temporary Housing did an outstanding job in finding us a great furnished home in the very popular beach town where we live - no easy task. CRS representative, Kimberly Barrett-Hinton, worked tirelessly to book 6 months of accommodations for us while our home is being repaired. She is very customer service oriented and caring. Thank you Kim and CRS!

My Experience with CRS My experience with CRS Temporary Housing has been extremely frustrating and financially damaging. What started as temporary housing assistance through an insurance claim turned into a complicated dispute involving housing payments, furniture, leases, communication, and ultimately the stability of my family’s housing. Throughout the process, I experienced repeated problems with communication and conflicting information about the terms and duration of the housing arrangement. CRS was involved in communicating with the landlord and handling housing payments, yet there were significant discrepancies concerning leases and who actually had authority to agree to certain terms. The furniture situation was another major issue. CRS provided used furniture, and there were disputes later about the condition and whereabouts of various items. After CRS eventually came to retrieve much of the furniture, I was later confronted with claims that items were missing or damaged and that I owed thousands of dollars for replacement costs. Despite requesting an itemized accounting and documentation supporting those charges, I did not receive what I believe would be adequate documentation to justify the amount being demanded. The housing-payment situation became even more serious. Payments were withheld while the furniture dispute was being addressed, creating problems with the landlord. Although the rent was eventually paid, I was then faced with claims of substantial late fees associated with the delayed payments. What makes this especially concerning is that these were not simply minor customer-service problems. The decisions and communication surrounding this situation had real consequences for my family’s housing and finances. I was left dealing with significant debt, housing instability, and the possibility of eviction while trying to resolve issues that arose from an insurance-funded temporary housing arrangement. I strongly recommend that anyone dealing with CRS keep every email, text message, lease, payment record, photograph, video, inventory document, and piece of correspondence. Get everything in writing and carefully review every document before signing anything. My experience has left me feeling that CRS did not adequately communicate or properly manage several critical aspects of my temporary housing arrangement. I believe customers deserve clear terms, accurate records, transparent billing, timely communication, and accountability when something goes wrong. Based on my experience, I would not recommend CRS without first carefully documenting everything and making sure every agreement and responsibility is clearly established in writing.

My advice if you are reading this and have been assigned CRS as your temporary housing company: if you have a strong emergency fund and the time to find a property yourself, contact your adjuster to find out the maximum they will reimburse for without additional approval and book housing yourself. I for the life of me cannot figure out what this company does. In the 2.5 weeks we’ve been working with them, we have been provided 3 rental properties (2 of which were immediate rejects due to locations I excluded from the geographical area). Their CRM does not have access to FurnishedFinder or other short term rental sites. After spending hours and hours of my own time trying to contact landlords, we finally opened up on an Airbnb case which took two days. Maybe their local intelligence of the Seattle market is bad, and better in others. The process crawls at a snail’s pace. Every little detail needs an adjuster’s approval. When we got momentum on moving the Airbnb process along, we lost both properties overnight because the dates were booked over. Nice people. Unfortunately, the company seems to be rife with bureaucracy and layers that slows everything down. I’ve worked with like four different teams, and each time the handoff has been bad and needed nudging to speed things up. Fortunately, we will be moving things along ourselves and working directly with insurance.