Looking for the Best Apartment areas for college students in Huntsville (Ashford: apartment complexes, lease)

[brendasue1976]

My daughter is considering transferring to Huntsville to play sports at UofA,Huntsville. I have been on line a number of times trying to find the safest area to rent an apartment for her which is close to the University. Can anyone help me with suggestions of good areas or streets, names of safe apartment complexes would also be very helpful. I have looked at many apartment review sites and so far have not found what I would consider the perfect off campus safe apartment complex. I would appreciate any help anyone might have. Thanks so much, Stressed mom from California !

[pyro4ik]

Will she have a car?

[brendasue1976]

Yes pyro4ik she will have her car with her.

[ghett61]

When I was at UAH, I lived in 2 complexes. One was Ashford Terrace and a whole lot of that complex was college age people. The other was the Reserve. It is right behind Target shopping center off University Drive. I did not have any safety issues at either one of those complexes. I heard about occasional car break ins, but I guess my car was never nice enough to break into it.

[cool_cuttab]

I second the Reserve. She can cut through Research Park and avoid the University traffic. Not that the research park traffic is the greatest LOL. But she'll be close to eating/shopping etc. Even if her car broke down she can get her necessities by walking. I've had friends stay there for years. It's a nice place with a mixture of college students and adults.

Nothing off Sparkman Drive

Maybe the few apartments on zeirdt. Unfortunately I can't remember the names at this time. But the commute to school won't be bad from there.

That's all for now. A long day and that's all I can spew out.

[Reactionary]

The on campus housing at UAH is fairly new and very safe. None of the nearby (Sparkman Drive) apartments are nice, don't know about the Reserve but the Zierdt Road apartments are nice and I've known some UAH students who lived there.

[hey teach]

I agree about the on campus housing at UA Huntsville. It is very nice. I stayed there when I attended Space Camp and the accomadations were excellent.

[FiveDime]

We lived at The Reserve for the first few months after we moved up here. I guess it can be something of a mixed bag; there are older and newer buildings. We didn't know better, so to get a flat of the size we wanted we ended up in one of the older buildings. There was nothing really physically wrong with the place, but our neighbors were animals. I should have known we weren't in the best of places when, the day we were moving in, we had to call maintenance to come and remove a used condom on the ground 2 feet off the sidewalk leading up to our unit. It took several days for them to get to it. The people living upstairs were a nightmare from the regard of nighttime noise. It was 2 adults, 2 small kids, and a dog. Seems the adults would go out until very late at night (often 3 - 5 AM) and leave the kids alone...so they'd be running around at all hours of the night (and the d%$#*ed dog dragging a chain across the floor) making all kinds of noise. It got to the point that we would go beat on the door after midnight, the monsters would clam up for a few minutes, then go back to whatever they were doing, keeping us up all night. In retrospect we probably should have informed both apartment management and the police of the situation simultaneously (the chlidren were pretty young, definitely too young to be left alone especially until very late in the night). I certainly recognize that there can be bad tenants everywhere, but when we moved out we did inform management about the neighbors and they didn't seem to care; they were more interested in making sure we paid the penalty for breaking the lease early (3 or 4 months into a 7-month lease, I'd have paid the whole 7 months just to get out of there...buying our house couldn't have come soon enough). I guess the lesson is any place can be hit or miss depending on who is adjacent to you, but the particular building we were in also transmitted noise from neighboring units pretty well. Perhaps newer building (with higher rents?) have better clients, and less noise? I will also add we specifically requested a ground-floor apartment so our daughter (almost 4 at the time) wouldn't disturb the neighbors below us jumping around on the floor...if only the animals above us had shown the same courtesy.

[who_knows_42]

I can tell you specific stories about the Reserve from when I lived there, and there's no way I would let a family member live there. But rather than bad mouth them with anecdotal stuff:

January 25th, 2012

Huntsville police are now saying there were three men shot today around 2:30 p.m. on Rime Village (Apartments) Drive.

Source: Three Huntsville men shot at Rime Village Apartments (updated) | al.com

Want your daughter around that?