Howard Hall

I’m approaching the end of my first year living here and I’ve continued my lease because I’ve more or less enjoyed my residence. I’ll elaborate.
The name of this building’s landlord is John Dang, but he lives elsewhere and you will only deal with the building’s manager, Tony (whose phone number I listed). Howard Hall used to be an all-​female private dormitory, built cerca ~1960s, but the space has since been reallocated into individual apartment units. You can still see, in some places, where walls have been torn down (if you look closely in certain lighting at the paint inconsistencies on the ceiling). In any case, there are three floors, the top two of which are solely composed of one-​bedroom units. The majority of the residents, basically everyone except the manager and the landlord’s son, are female, and Tony only rents to students.
I live on the bottom floor, in a two-​bedroom. The manager also lives on this floor. The rent for these units wavers around $ 1800 and is generally negotiable. This is a VERY good price for the size of the units — the two bedroom ones include two full bathrooms, a spacious living room, and fairly large bedrooms (12 ft x 12 ft). There are multiple closets in the hallway for general storage and large closets in each bedroom. One of the bedrooms contains a small but fully equipped bathroom inside, and the other has a larger, tub bathroom just outside the door.
The arrangement of the inside-​bathroom makes that bedroom ideal for a single owner because it’s difficult to arrange two twin beds when 3 of the walls are essentially off limits (main door, bathroom door, closet doors).
I didn’t give it higher than three stars because the building is very old and requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance. This is most noticeable in the kitchen and bathrooms because the paint and carpet in the bedrooms is maintained very regularly. The kitchen is a little small, but this hasn’t been a problem for me; what has caused trouble is that things bug out a little (our oven sparked, the bathroom fan needed to be replaced and wasn’t in a timely manner). There is a slight mold problem in the showers but not so bad that you’ll need to buy a dehumidifier or anything. It can be scrubbed away and Tony will also get it painted over or cleaned up if you have issues with it.
Even though the place is so close to frat row, I’ve never had noise problems (possibly because my unit is snuggled next to another building that blocks the sounds). I liked the location because it’s so well lit and people are always out at all times. I used to come home from studio at 4am and never felt threatened or anything (except sometimes there are skunks, opossums, raccoons frolicking about, but it’s fine).
Essentially, this place is a good value, but you need to take initiative and get things taken care of without irritating your overworked manager, who sometimes is surprisingly fast with repairs and other times takes months and months.