University Park North

My advice is to LISTEN TO THE REVIEWS. When I was choosing where to stay on campus I read some of the reviews on Unilocal and dismissed most of them. I was wrong. In my opinion, the cons entirely outweigh the pros.
(I lived in one of the smaller apartment buildings, not the towers. I cannot speak for those.)
Pros:
— Spacious living room and bedroom, lots of storage for a student.
— Decent kitchen with Oven & lots of storage space. (fridge gets packed quickly)
— Bathtub (However I was always too grossed out to use it.)
— Only 2 minutes walking distance from Trader Joes & Stonestown Galleria.
— On campus, relatively close to classes.
— Bike racks & closest housing to bike parking garage.
Cons:
— EVERYTHING BREAKS. (Lights, Toilet, Heater, Window screens, Door knobs, Closet doors, etc.)
— We had a horrible ant problem when we first moved in, despite the fact that we were very tidy. It has since gone away, but it took a semester and a half for them to go away.
— Maintenance takes forever and shows up often times at random. Horrible communication between different staff. Our heater was broken all winter.
— Doors can be easily manipulated, especially bedroom doors (i.e not safe.)
— Internet is bad. Skype & Facetime are almost not worth it considering how often the internet stops working .
— Not a lot of ventilation. Gets really hot and strangely moist inside when windows are left closed too long. (the windows would literally create puddles of water inside when closed.) Also gets very cold during winter & fall.
— Windows open so far that you have strain to reach and close them. If left open they will slam shut. They also cause doors to open, close, and slam.
— You cannot leave windows open past 5:00 or mosquitoes will find their way in and eat you alive.
— Washing machines and dryers break often and it is rare that anyone puts a sign on them to warn you, So you waste your money on a broken machine.
— Luckily, the fire alarm has only ever gone off once the entire time I have lived here because it is unbearable. It doesn’t just go off in your room of course, so the entire building has to evacuate. It was like we were about to be bombed or quarantined. ridiculously & painfully loud.
— Excess trash from Stonestown parking lot blows into courtyard so there is wonderful trash filled view from the window. I have actually gone out there by myself to pick up trash a couple times.
— Garbage truck comes by at the same time every morning and wakes me up.
— Some guy mows the lawn at like the crack of dawn very often. i don’t know anything about lawn mowing, but does it really have to be that often.

The 1 star is for the location since it’s literally right next to school but other than that, like many Unilocalers said below, LIVE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. The fire alarm literally goes off every week, there are a shitload of Mosquitos that somehow magically get in and bite you on every exposed surface of your skin, and the maintenance team is a huge joke. We had a maintenance guy come in yesterday after we basically called them multiple times and he left after 10 minutes without a word and without our sink even being fixed. Oh yeah, and I’ve heard plenty of stories about people getting their laundry STOLEN. That means some people actually take out other people’s wet clothes and steal them… Ew!? This place sucks.

I lived here with my friend, fellow SFSU Gator and fellow Unilocal user, Bryce M., during the spring 2013 semester at SFSU. It’s made up essentially of townhouses and then four towers, as you make your way down Buckingham. Bryce and I lived in the third tower at 295.
Some facts:
* The housing office is located right at the corner of Buckingham and 19^th. Over there, you can ask questions when they’re open and drop off your rent as well.
* There are several facilities in the back for you to do laundry.
* If you want to pay extra, you can get a designated parking space for your car.
* Mailboxes are located on the first floor.
Pros:
+ Really close to SFSU and Stonestown. Many students and staff have lived and currently live in these buildings. You will also find yourself living next to people who are not students or staff (i.e. old couples).
+ Surprisingly, in spite of what I’ve heard about old/​outdated rooms, Bryce and I were given a newly-​painted, modern room with an excellent view of Lake Merced. To save money, we opted for a one-​bedroom apartment. I slept in the bedroom and Bryce made the living room his bedroom.
+ Maintenance-​wise, everything worked well in our apartment. On one occasion, when our toilet seat broke, maintenance was there within a day and it was fixed immediately.
Cons:
— The buildings, overall, are quite outdated and so I can understand why others would complain about the living conditions.
— The garbage trucks had a bad habit of making their rounds first thing early in the morning. And with the dumpsters and garbage cans placed at the back of the building, near our room, it got really annoying being woken up on a regular basis by the roaring engines of the garbage trucks. Also, there’s a fire station down the street. So it’s not uncommon to hear/​see firetrucks racing down the street with their sirens blasting either.
— It’s not necessarily an unsafe area, but one should be careful as cars have been vandalized before.
It was an interesting experience. Would I live there again? Maybe.
3 stars

LIVE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Sure it is close to campus, but the living conditions are simply not worth it. The buildings are in super rough shape. Kitchen cabinets fall apart. Mold begins to grow in your bathroom due to the fact that they have no ventilation. There is no air conditioner, so beware the days when the temperature rises anywhere above 70 degrees and you are forced to leave the window open. It doesn’t matter if you have window screens up, dozens of mosquitos will enter your room and bite any and all surfaces of your skin that are exposed. I kid you not I had to wake up in the middle of the night once and killed ten mosquitos in my room.
Any maintenance calls will take days to process. And don’t ever call the housing office with any comments, questions, or concerns. They are nothing but clueless.

Move anywhere else but here. as the other Unilocaler said, the customer service is non-​existent. The apartments are in horrible condition, and when you request maintenance work for the APARTMENT THAT YOU PAY FOR, they still can take up to a week to respond, and even longer o fix the problem. They also enjoy doing tons of «maintenance work» that occurs at all hours of the day, and never improves anything as far as I can tell. My personal favorite is a large truck that always comes around 6 am Tuesday and Friday morning, that makes lots of noise moving heavy equipment for no purpose at all, and the men who shout at each other throughout the ordeal. Being a student and having projects and papers to work on later in the day means nothing to them, and they will happily ignore your requests to start work later, or any formal complaints you make via email, since no one will answer the phone at 6 am. I have emailed them multiple times to complain, and they never respond. They do not care about their residents. And lastly, do your laundry elsewhere too. They do not accept coins, they make you buy this stupid card that you have to add money onto with a credit card, and then the card won’t work. DO NOT EVER CONSIDER THIS PLACE, FIND ANYWHERE ELSE! IT’S NOT WORTH IT

The quality of customer service is appalling. I went in to try and switch a parking pass for a friend and was given a sheet of paper to fill out. I left, filled it out, and returned only to be given instructions on how to properly fill out the paperwork. The woman who greeted me was kind and willing to help, until it took more than 30 seconds of her time. The then was annoyed that I had questions to ask.
I passed along the information to my friend who works during their hours of operation. I will never volunteer to go into that office again. It is ridiculous that they will not switch out a pass but have no problem taking money for it.
If you are looking for a place that you feel will keep you safe, help you out when they can, and have a professional staff KEEP LOOKING. This place is toxic enough to make their employees bitter.