gello5765 wrote:Where are people living for their 1L? Any advice on looking for apartments? I don't really want to live in the Tower, or at Bay Mission. . .
I've been looking for an apt here for about a week now and I think I might be able to provide some good advice on this.
I don't know where you'll be relocating from but if you're trying to find your own apartment it really seems like an uphill battle. Finding shared housing may be much much easier (but not an option if you plan on not being alone, for example).
In my situation, I couldn't really live in the tower (the location is not a place I want my girlfriend to have to deal with) or the Mission Bay (they only offer housing for solo people, that is shared with 4 randoms to uc hastings students, from what I was told). And as most house / apartment shares don't want a couple they don't know to move in, we're basically stuck looking for apartments, mostly studios.
It's been really difficult because most of the vacancies are in areas that you (I should say I) don't want to live. One of the first apartments we looked at one of the neighbors discouraged us because next door at the projects there was semi regular shootings. Far be it from me to question her as there was typical signs of gang activity. People hanging out on the streets doing nothing, police officers hanging out in their cars a few blocks away, etc. Plus, they were projects next door.
But there are pretty much projects everywhere in San Francisco. which I seem to think is artificially increasing the land by unnaturally increasing the demand for it. But that's another discussion. The point is that finding a place that isn't within walking distance from a project will cost you a lot of money. and aside from projects there are the just plain crappy neighborhoods.
If you're looking for a place, my suggestions based on my observations would be stay away from anything in the tenderloin, or rather anything listed as 'downtown'. Western addition near eddy / laguna area and south of that is mostly projects, and seems like pretty low quality housing. Mission seems like it could be nice, but I have a problem with areas where people just 'hang out' on the sidewalks, which makes me shy away from mission st. And of course market street is a place where you probably don't want to live either.
That is all depending on your tolerance for the odor of urine and obnoxious homeless people though. But I have to say the homeless people here are pretty mild mannered. Aside from seeing them smoke crack on the street, they really don't ask for change that often compared to where I'm from.
When you're looking for a place, keep in mind that there's a lot of competition for the less expensive places. I think of all open houses we've gone to there have been at least 2 or more other people also looking at the apartment. So follow the Hastings off campus housing guide, make a "rental resume" with the common rental application information on it, make photocopies of your ID and potentially a copy of some part of your credit report and take these to open houses. If you like the place fill out an application there or give them whatever information they need on the spot. This will give you a slight leg up, and will keep you from having to do something like go to kinkos to fax the application and ID photocopy.
Aside from that, finding an apartment without being here is going to generally be impossible, so plan on coming and staying in short term housing for more than a couple weeks.
P.S. Is anyone going to the Alumni center talk thing tonight or other ones this summer?
