Hi there! I'm a second-year Bioengineering PhD student at Stanford, and my current housemate is moving to SF so I'm looking for a new housemate to share my simple 2 bedroom / 1 bathroom apartment in Menlo Park on Alice Ln, near Middle Ave & University Drive. The apartment is modest and a bit older, and its value comes from its quietness and extremely convenient location near campus if you bike as your primary way of getting around.
x_x Is the housing search exhausting you? ㅠ_ㅠ I was in the same position as you 3 years ago until I found this apartment on SUPost, and I hope you find a place which fits your needs! I remember being frustrated by the vagueness of the listings, so I've included comprehensive details to help you decide whether you want to schedule a visit. This means there's lots of words below, but the key points are highlighted with "*****" if you just want to skim through!
ABOUT YOU:
***** You're looking for a long-term lease of at least 6 months. Ideally you're looking to stay until at least June 2020 or August/September 2020, or maybe even longer.
***** You can move in sometime between the last week of September and the middle of October. There is flexibility within that date range, but my housemate will not be moving out before the last week of September.
- You can be of any gender, as long as you respect LGBT people and are fine sharing an apartment with me, a nonbinary person who is usually perceived as male but also slightly gender non-conforming.
- You don't smoke anything indoors. We already get enough airborne particulate matter exposure from the Northern California wildfires which have started making the air toxic and unbreatheable a week or two every year, and they are intensifying due to climate change!
ABOUT THE LOCATION:
***** This location is ideal for biking to/from the west part of the Stanford campus: it takes 12 minutes to bike to the Medical School Campus and just 2 more minutes to bike to the Science and Engineering Quad. I bike this route twice daily - it's a combination of bike lanes and quiet residential streets, so it's safe to bike.
- It's a 10-minute bike ride to either the Menlo Park Caltrain station or the Palo Alto Caltrain station. If you're a Stanford student/postdoc/employee, this makes it easy to take advantage of Stanford's free Caltrain Go Pass, e.g. to go up to SF or down to Mountain View. The stations are too far to walk to, but the silver lining is that you can't hear or feel the trains passing every night.
- You won't need a car for groceries: it's a 5-minute bike ride to Safeway or an 8-minute bike ride to Trader Joe's.
- The apartment building (which has 2 other units) and the surrounding neighborhood are safe and quiet.
ABOUT THE APARTMENT:
***** 1 unfurnished bedroom with a walk-in closet is available in a 2 BR / 1 BA apartment unit.
***** The rental rate this past year was $1420 per month per bedroom. The rental rate will probably increase to approx. $1470 this year starting in September, but it's not finalized.
- The landlord for this rental is a local small-scale landlord in a ludicrous Peninsula/South Bay housing market which lacks enough local rent controls or social housing to ensure high-quality affordable homes for ordinary people. This is why the rent is probably going to increase this year, even though it was below market rate when I moved in. At least our landlord is friendly and makes repairs happen when needed. And at least he's not one of those corporate developers building new a e s t h e t i c luxury apartments in the neighborhood which will make living near West Campus infeasible for every grad student and postdoc by 2030. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- We will split the utilities and internet bills evenly - it averages out to roughly $60 per person per month in the summer, and roughly $90 per person per month in the winter.
- In the kitchen we will share a stove, a combination refrigerator/freezer, a microwave, a rice cooker, and a toaster oven. We will evenly split fridge/freezer space.
- The living room is basically empty, so there is plenty of space for anything you want to put there. If you want to buy furniture to make it less empty, we can split the costs of that. Or you can use the space to store stuff.
- There is free laundry on-site.
- There is a carport parking space reserved for us (i.e. for you, since I don't drive), and the carport area has a closet where you can store your bike.
ABOUT ME:
***** I'm a quiet and warm/friendly Asian American nonbinary person in my mid-20s. I go by they/them pronouns, though most people refer to me with he/him pronouns and I don't feel a strong urge to correct them.
- I hang out with my friends elsewhere, and I don't invite people over or host social things in the apartment. If you'd like to invite people over, that's perfectly fine as long as we're quiet and respectful of our downstairs neighbors.
- I'm out of the apartment much of the time, either on campus or (sometimes) away doing fieldwork for my research. When I'm in the apartment, I'm just in my room.
***** I'm a night owl. I'm usually up and out of the apartment around 9 AM - 10 AM on weekdays, and I may return back any time between 6 PM and 10 PM (and rarely after midnight).
- On average, I cook (meal prep) twice a week, so you can use the kitchen a lot if you want.
- I keep the shared spaces reasonably clean. Because of my busy lab schedule lately, I haven't had the time I need to Marie Kondo my own bedroom, but the temporary messiness is only in my bedroom.
- Sometimes I will be out doing fieldwork not in the Bay Area, so you'll get some extended periods of time where you have the place all to yourself.
- I don't smoke.
ABOUT US:
***** We'll communicate to figure out how we can best respect each other's needs, wishes, boundaries, etc.
- We'll get to know each other at whatever your comfort level is, so that we can practice good communication and trust needed to coexist in a shared apartment.
- We will work together to find a mutually-agreed-upon level of cleanliness to maintain in the shared spaces, and we will share the work needed to keep them clean.
If you're interested, email me and we can discuss further and/or arrange a tour!
