UCSF Mission Bay Housing

Our experience with UCSF Housing marked the first time my partner and I had to contact a lawyer. It was a fun milestone in our relationship! Our lease was ending, as it does for everyone now after 2 years. (Doesn’t matter how long your program or employment with the university lasts; housing will kick you out after 2 years). With the SF market being like it is, we figured we better start searching for a new rental early. We were lucky to find a new place that we could afford with a lease beginning in June. Our lease with UCSF ended in July, but we contacted the housing office multiple times to ensure that it would be okay to move out early. Everyone we spoke to ensured us it would be fine as long as we gave 30 days notice. After all, these apartments are in extremely high demand, and there’s currently a long wait list for 1 BRs. So we gave over 30 days notice and thought we could finally relax about getting kicked out of our housing and focus on the upcoming move.
A few days later, we got an email from Kelly in the housing office saying she’d already booked a new tenant for our apartment starting in July, so we would be responsible for paying rent until then. Mind you, no one had told us a new tenant had already been booked despite multiple conversations with the housing office prior to this. We explained our situation to Kelly, hoping she would take pity on us since we could not afford a month of overlapping rents. She wouldn’t budge. We contacted the housing director, Leslie, and she sided with Kelly, insisting that we’d have to pay rent until the July tenant moved in, despite the fact that there were plenty of people on the wait list who would have been happy to move in starting in June. By this point we were getting desperate, so we shelled out for a consultation with a housing lawyer, figuring that would be cheaper than paying rent at 2 apartments. (It was, exponentially.) He told us the housing office was violating Civil Code 1951.2, which requires landlords to mitigate damages by finding, or allowing a leasee to find, a replacement tenant to take over a lease that is terminated with effective notice.
We informed the housing office of this, and suddenly, they became a lot more interested in helping us find a June tenant. (Well, at first they said they couldn’t find one, so we posted our own ad on Craigslist and got a response in under 2 hours from a UCSF affiliate looking for June housing.) So things finally worked out in our favor, but only after hours of emails, phone calls, and bringing a lawyer on board. It was a huge source of stress during an already stressful time.
Let’s be real. If you’re offered an apartment here, you’re probably going to take it. I know we were scared to be moving into the worst rental market in the country, so when we were first offered UCSF housing, we felt extremely lucky. But my advice to you is: get everything the housing office tells you documented in writing and remember that they don’t have your best interests at heart, despite the fact that you are a UCSF student/​resident/​whatever.
In addition to this fiasco, there were a lot of things we didn’t love about living at Mission Bay. For one, the area is a concrete wasteland devoid of basic necessities like a grocery store. Definitely not the pedestrian oasis I pictured when I imagined moving to SF. For another, the T is the worst MUNI line and does not run on any schedule I could ever infer. (We now live on the N, which is 100x more reliable.) Also, whenever there’s a Giants game (which is almost everyday during the season), the train gets stranded around the ballpark, delaying your commute considerably. Finally, the housing itself is not very nice. It’s dorm-​stock, with cheap carpets and cabinets, and SMALL. The north building, where we lived, contains the trash compactor and often smells like old trash. The housing office says their prices are under-​market, but that’s compared to Mission Bay, where 1BR condos go for $ 1M. You could easily find a much nicer place for the same price in the Sunset or Glen Park. We did and are glad to be done with UCSF Housing.
(I do want to add that the people working at the front desk in the housing office, particularly Jason and Claire, are some of the nicest people I’ve ever encountered, and I imagine things would run a lot better if they were in charge. Unfortunately, they are only the sweet face of the operation, and the people behind the scenes are nowhere near as kind and competent.)

Very convenient housing. If you’re a UCSF student, resident, fellow or even single faculty, this place is wonderful!
location is ⁵⁄₅
facility is 3.5÷5
leasing office staff ³⁄₅

Great place to live. Not only is it a steal but people are cool, mostly grad students and the like that keep to themselves. I’ve ever had any problems. It’s clean and got lots of amenities nearby like just downstairs or within a 15 min walk such as at&t park, dog patch, protrero hill and much more. Muni station is right across the street on 3^rd and ucsf shuttle service is great. Absolutely love it here!

too afraid to speak about this place — that’s why there aren’t any REAL reviews except for Marc’s and mine. Sorry, but you will regret moving here. Get a bigger relocation loan and move elsewhere– California landlord/​tenant law is not abided by whatsoever.

This is a GREAT place to live if you’re affiliated with UCSF
The perks:
–you have sun here!
–great housing staff always readily available to answer questions via phone and all my emails have always been answered within a day. Super nice people! :)
–package room — packages are funneled through a package room so you don’t have to worry that someone has stolen your package from your front step
–internet and water is included in rent
–maintenance is always done lightning fast here! You get a response within a day for non urgent requests and even faster
–electricity is included in 4 bedroom apartments
–parking structure right across the quad
–VERY competitive rent prices for where you are in the city — 10 minute walk from
–convenient shuttle services in the area: UCSF and Mission Bay Shuttle — no service on weekends though.
–Muni Stop right outside your door
–Food choices: Cafe24, Subway, Publico, Starbucks, The Pub, Espostos, Z crepes, Peasant Pies, Coffee (within the ucsf campus), limited food choices on the weekends though.
–Wednesday Farmers market while in season
–Convenient to the freeway: ²⁸⁰⁄₈₀
–Safe area: they have proximity access fobs so that no one can just walk into your apartment complex
Overall — I LOVE mission bay housing. It’s a great place to live!