Sierra Property Management deep cleaning nearly 200 student rental units

ISLA VISTA, California – As UCSB students begin moving out of their apartments, many questions linger on how to make these rental units safe for the next class of tenants. 

Sierra Property Management manages many properties throughout Isla Vista and was struggling to find a safe way to clean these apartments.

"We were growing concerned," Sierra Property Management president Michelle Roberson said. "When the pandemic hit, a lot of our trusted vendors were getting nervous about working in Isla Vista."

Last week, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reported two new COVID-19 cases in Isla Vista.

"When we were moving people out of units, some were being tested for the virus as of Saturday," Roberson said.

"We have people that our moving here from all over the state and the world," Sierra Property Management CEO Kevin Roberson said. "They can possibly bring new contaminations which haven’t been experienced here before."

As part of an effort to ensure the safety of students returning to school, Sierra Property Management partnered with locally owned Master Clean USA to deep clean nearly 200 student rental units.

"We are dry fogging an EPA registered and FDA approved cold sterilant and food safe service chemical,” Master Clean USA owner Skip Jankoski said.

During the school year, many students lived within a close capacity inside these apartment complexes.

Sierra Property Management wanted to ensure that anyone moving back into student housing over the next few months would not be potentially exposed to COVID-19 on surfaces within their units.

For this reason, Jankoski’s staff is working hard to carefully sanitize and disinfect each and every one of the units.

"Any pathogen any microbe that's either airborne or surface born is killed,” Jankoski said.

Master Clean will use a two-step, advanced virus-removal procedure provided by Pure Maintenance of Santa Barbara County.

The procedure involves the application of two, non-toxic products using dry-fog technology. The first product, InstaPURE, sterilizes the entire unit, effectively killing any mold, bacteria and viruses — including COVID-19 — that might remain from a previous tenant or guest. 

"We will certify that we have sterilized the building and provided a ninety day antimicrobial protectant on all services within that building,” Jankoski said.

Both products in the Pure Maintenance disinfectant system are approved as safe by the FDA, and certified by the Environmental Protection Agency as meeting or exceeding CDC guidelines for pathogen removal. 

Once treated, the rental units are certified virus-free. 

"Now we want to say it's virus free,” Roberson concluded. 

This deep cleaning process will be completed within a week, as students can move back in next Monday. 

Sierra Property Management is owned and operated by Michelle Roberson and her husband, Kevin Roberson. An industry leader in the Santa Barbara real estate-management world, Sierra manages 1,400 rental units, including apartments, residential and commercial properties, from Carpinteria to Goleta.