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Afternoon all, and I hope this isn't too much of a wash, rinse and repeat thread.
My brother recently graduated from UC and has been working at the Cincinnati Zoo. He decided to stay rooted with past roommates around UC, but has found that was a mistake. With his rent up this summer, he is beginning to look at other areas. Here are my questions/needs:
Where can he find a Studio or One Bedroom Apartment for $500-$600/month?
Is that even possible especially at the low end?
It seems there are some multi-unit buildings in some areas that fit this bill. Would an internet search (Zillow, Craigslist) be OK, or would just driving around looking for the "For Rent" signs be best? I'm assuming the latter.
Which leads me to my next question. Where can I find these locations to drive around?
I am rather familiar with Cincinnati (obviously having been down many times since brother lives there and I live outside Dayton). So you can throw out neighborhoods and street names and I'll have a rough idea of location. My concern with location has to do with where he can find this price point. Obviously, the safer the better. But if it is worse than, say the areas south of UC Medical, forget it.
Finally, since he works at the Zoo, I think for gas and time purposes, keeping the commute to within 5-10 miles would be good. Also, let's keep to the East Side of town. Pointless to go over the Mill Creek and I-75 if it can be avoided. Thoughts on that?
Some areas I've seen just by glancing at Craigslist, include some multi-families off Erie just east of Red Bank. Near the Walmart Super Center. I am pretty sure this is Madisonville (even though the ad says Hyde Park, which is a red flag), but is that area around Red Bank and Erie OK? Also, are there multi-family units with one-bed or studios in Pleasant Ridge? I'm thinking this may be the best location? What are the better parts of Norwood and would they fit the price?
It's a typical CL listing tactic to quote an available rental as being in a nearby, "better," neighborhood than the one it's actually in. (At least back in the day when everybody consulted a newspaper for vacancies, the word "near" was added to the name of the more desirable locale.)
That price point is decidedly "low end," so forget about any of the trendy parts of town right off the bat. An area close by the zoo which often gets short shrift is St Bernard (see separate threads, including one currently active regarding independent coffee shops.) This is probably because it's been a very insular sort of place - and also a "sundown town" - for most of its life. Also, there are no high-rises or shiny brand-spanking-new apartment complexes to be found. What "rental communities" exist, such as the oddly named Chalet Drive along the Cincinnati (Paddock Hills) border, are mainly close to or past the half-century mark. A goodly number of St Bernard's apartments are in fact halves of older duplexes. (Plus, naturally since this is Greater Cincinnati and an area settled before WWII, you'll find a 4-unit "brick box" here and there.) They're situated along many a side street, not only Vine St or Mitchell or Ross. St Bernard is one of those places where knowing people is invaluable. But - failing that - an extensive "windshield tour" is your best bet for finding something. The main thing to watch out for is proximity to 75; highway noise is present 24-7 and who needs that? With that in mind stay east of Vine.
Continuing out Vine St, the next two communities (independent Elmwood Place, and Cincinnati's Carthage) have been in visible and significant decline for some years now. They're not for the naive or faint of heart, the kinds of places where a onetime bank is now a beauty salon and bored young and not-so-young people aimlessly wander the main drag or congregate on corners. But by the same token a discerning eye can quickly find a multi-family house kept in good order by a resident landlord - even right on Vine St itself, but even more so nearby on, say, Township Ave or Fairpark.
All three of the above areas can also boast of being along the 78 bus line. (Imagine that, a car-less commute in Cincinnati.) Still farther out Vine St lies Hartwell, another city neighborhood with a somewhat shaky commercial strip but much quieter and safer residential enclaves. It's not jumping with night life at all, but does have a Kroger and a CVS for convenient necessity shopping. About the only street to steer clear of would be Anthony Wayne Ave along the eastern fringe (due to crime as well as train/expressway noise.) A walking or "windshield" tour would most likely lead to results here, too, where lots of blocks consist mainly of single-family houses with a brick box or two thrown in. Ditto for adjacent "Valleydale," an unincorporated part of Springfield Township which most people think of interchangeably with Hartwell (Vine St marks the boundary.)
It's automatic and human nature for people to assume everyone in their early 20's is out to party or "hook up" every chance they get. But some are single only on paper and others never had it in them to see different garage bands every night or just get drunk n' rowdy. It's for the homebodies and/or "thinking about getting engaged to be engaged" that the Vine St corridor communities beyond Avondale could work very well.
I don't think you should rule out either Northside or Monfort Heights, despite neither being on the east side. Also like the suggestion of St. Bernard.
Cincinnati is cheap, you should be able to find a one bedroom in Clifton for that money, further out it will buy you a two bedroom. Most sections of Cincinnati can e street-by-street safety wise so rather than give you a list of decent streets in wavering areas (EWH, Evanston, Mt. auburn) you can focus on a couple of more generally safe areas like: clifton gaslight , Northside (gritty trendy), Hyde Park. oakley and Norwood.
If your brother is used to being surrounded by nightlife start with the gaslight district, easiest zoo access with most going on.
Don't let people scare you off Craigslist, just make calls, map places and look at them in the daylight. Craigslist is your friend.
If you want to drive around the gaslight section you can loosely consider it the area North of MLK, West of Vine and South of McAlpin. Clifton Ave runs through the middle. The closer to the Zoo/Vine the worse, you generally don't want to live on a street that connects to Vine and allows for foot or car traffic from Vine. Don't go north to Woolper on the eastern section of the neighborhood.
Yeah, I know that isn't a lot. But you gotta start out with what you got. Anyway, I never thought about St. Bernard. Wasn't sure of what kind of place it was in part because you never here about it.
CL doesn't necessarily scare me. I'm street smart and know the precautions to follow. And red flags to watch for. As far as CL listings, there was a place that was behind the Hyde Park Golf Course, on Allendale. Off Brotherton. Not sure how that place is. It was one of the 4-unit brick boxes, but the street was nice and there was a large and fairly new apartment tower near the end of the street.
Northside, I know it is up-and-coming quickly. What areas there are better? It seems (at least by Google Maps boundaries) to be rather large. Are there certain streets better than others (i.e. Hartwell's Anthony Wayne)?
The bus wouldn't be a bad option. I'll have to pop over to the Metro site. Any other places to be aware of? As a note, he is trying to move away from the college scene. Would Clifton Gaslight be too close? Also, isn't it rather expensive for the budget?
The condensed version of what's good in Northside is, "The farther in from Colerain and Spring Grove, the better." He'd also want to not be in too close proximity to the McKee rec center on Chase Ave although the street itself is largely OK. (A goyguy family friend, single female at that, has owned - and lived in - a house on Chase since the '80s.) But while Northside is still a good bit more "ghetto," albeit with an unusual amount of diversity, than is often acknowledged there's another negative to it also. Technically the artsy hipster weirdo scene isn't "college," but in reality a lot of its participants are textbook cases of arrested development. Capiche (sp)? Forty-year-olds with ear gauges and full body tattoos, answering to "dude" and writing subversive poetry while tinkering with bicycles...more power to them.
Brotherton Rd has been the "iffy" part of Oakley in more recent times, thanks to its long line of low-rent brick boxes (as is true of some other struggling neighborhoods.) The buildings themselves - if maintained adequately - are awesome living spaces. You typically get a picture window in the living room, an entirely separate dining room of all things, and good square footage throughout. BUT since they're neither trendy loft conversions nor new construction the supply far exceeds the demand. And that naturally leads to cheaper rents, which leads to shoddy upkeep, which leads to drug trade types and "illegals" moving in, etc.
Clifton Gaslight definitely falls on the pricy side, at least for what you normally get. Even the spoiled students hear about it if they try to get into a place that's expensive in their parents' eyes (or that the co-op job can't pay for.) And if the cost doesn't deter, landlords have their ways of dodging tenants who may not be students but are simply "too young." They also try to dance around renting to single males or all-guy housemates - seems unattached men under 40 have a tendency to be loud and slovenly, dunno where that assumption came from.
That said - I have an "in" at a '70s Clifton condo development, which often has units up for rent, near Cincinnati State. The cost can't be all that high because the sale prices haven't been. (Absentee owners are generally just looking for someone to keep the place up and cover their condo fees and possibly mortgage.) No big secret that I have to hide from the forum: It's "Maisons Lafayette," named for the nearby mansion-lined street and situated on the thematically named Rue de la Paix, off Ludlow Ave. Be on DM alert.
Believe it or not, the yuppie/upper-middle-class Hyde Park and Mt Lookout are well stocked with brick boxes and other relatively cheap apartment buildings. Rarely can you ride along Edwards Rd or Linwood Ave without seeing at least one "For Rent" sign. Naturally they're priced according to what the market will bear, but in February there's not much of a market.
Bus info is at http://www.go-metro.com. You'll notice that the zoo is served pretty well by multiple routes, including the 78. By drawing an imaginary boundary line between Vine St, Mitchell Ave, and Victory Parkway and staying outside of it you can get a better picture of where's decent and close by. BTW if "student scene" avoidance is key the numerous buildings along Dana Ave (eastern extension of Mitchell/Clinton Springs) in the 900 and 1000 blocks are definitely not up for consideration. That's Xavier territory. (The "sketch" factor is a secondary issue.)
You'll also see how near St Bernard is to CZBG. Unless a "morning person" is looking for new digs, being less than 15 minutes away from work is a very very big deal.
When I moved to Cincinnati right after college, 2003, I didn't know anything about Cincinnati. If this forum was around, I didn't know about it. I had vague notions that Hyde Park was probably the place to land. I pulled a couple of those three-line advertisements from the newspaper. I came to cincinnati with a car full of things and visited a $350 studio in an eight-family in norwood and a $425 studio in a larger building hyde park. My home at the time was some 4 hours north, so I hoped that I could move in that evening. I liked the place in Norwood because it was right next to a grocery store. I didn't know it was its own city or how it was perceived relative to hyde park, over-the-rhine, or anywhere. I offered the lady who took care of the norwood property $325 and said I had to move in tonight. She said okay. So I handed over almost all my earthly money for the deposit and immediately walked over to the Norwood grocery store where Kroger's is now (safeway?), bought ramen noodles, cooked them in my pot, and ate while sitting on my floor. After this nourishing dinner, I walked over to Media Play and listened to some CDs that I couldn't afford to buy.
I stayed in that apartment for the next twelve months. The rent was low, I could walk to most things, and nobody ever tried to break into my car. Even my building neighbors were a cast of characters that I'll never forget. I'm grateful to have landed there and have always had positive feelings towards the place, despite its reputation as less-than-welcoming.
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My ex lived in Valleydale. There are placed I would or wouldn't consider in that area. Some of the apartment houses on the quite side streets in Hartwell looked nice. St Bernard seemed safe to me thought there's worse areas on either side of it. I would have no problem renting in STB myself
I was looking at Northside street views (they updated them finally from 2007/2008), and I was pleasently surprised by the amount of redevelopment. Many of the streets seem much better than 7-10 years ago. Really pretty. I'll have to inform him to check out that. Monfort Heights seems pretty far out.
I was looking at Northside street views (they updated them finally from 2007/2008), and I was pleasently surprised by the amount of redevelopment. Many of the streets seem much better than 7-10 years ago. Really pretty. I'll have to inform him to check out that. Monfort Heights seems pretty far out.
Monfort Heights is about 7-10 minutes northwest of Northside on the back streets, with no traffic to speak of. Probably 5 minutes on the interstate. But they are very different kinds of neightborhods.
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Rarely can you ride along Edwards Rd or Linwood Ave without seeing at least one "For Rent" sign. Naturally they're priced according to what the market will bear, but in February there's not much of a market.
