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Renting an Apartment in South Phoenix
What You Should Know
The Southside is generally considered the area between 35th avenue to west and 48th street to the east. Van Buren street to the north and South Mountain avenue to the south. With about 400,000 residents South Phoenix is bursting at the seams. The community is helping to fuel the growth of one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. With golf courses and new housing developments appearing everywhere. But there are problems. Long associated with crime and largely Black and Hispanic about 30 percent of the population lives in poverty. Quality housing is in short supply. Most homes were built by the homeowners themselves using adobe and wood, materials that fail to meet building codes. Low property values make it unattractive for lenders to finance home improvements. Community development systems are still in their early stages , but over the last decade important steps have been taken to make quality, low-cost housing available.
More Apartment Information
An apartment (or flat in Britain and most other Commonwealth countries) is a
self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments
may be owned (by an owner-occupier) or rented (by tenants).
Some apartment-dwellers own their apartments, either as co-ops, in which the
residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or
in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the
public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but
large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment
connotes a residential unit or section in a building. Apartment building owners,
lessors, or managers often use the more general word units to refer to
apartments. Units can be used to refer to rental business suites as well as
residential apartments. When there is no tenant occupying an apartment, the
lessor is said to have a vacancy. For apartment lessors, each vacancy represents
a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the apartment is vacant
(i.e., unoccupied). Lessors' objectives are often to minimize the vacancy rate
for their units. The owner of the apartment typically transfers possession to
the occupant by giving him/her the key to the apartment entrance door and any
other keys need to live there, such as a common key to the building or any other
common areas, and an individual unit mailbox key. When the occupant move out,
these keys should typically be returned to the owner.
Apartments can be classified into several types. Studio, efficiency, bed-sit, or
bachelor apartments tend to be the smallest apartments with the cheapest rents
in a given area. These kinds of apartment usually consist mainly of a large room
which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen
facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom is its own smaller
separate room. Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom apartments where
one bedroom is a separate room from the rest of the apartment. Then there are
two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. apartments. Small apartments often have only
one entrance/exit. Large apartments often have two entrances/exits, perhaps a
door in the front and another in the back. Depending on the building design, the
entrance/exit doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside,
such as a hallway. Depending on location, apartments may be available for rent
furnished with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in
with his/her own furniture. Permanent carpeting is often included in an
apartment.
Laundry facilities are usually kept in a separate area accessible to all the
tenants in the building. Depending on when the building was built and the design
of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electric may be common
for all the apartments in the building or separate for each apartment and billed
separately to each tenant (however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal
to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the
premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in
apartments. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed
separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are
extra also. Parking space, air conditioner, and extra storage space may or may
not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number
of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the
apartment building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location
accessible to the public and, thus, to the letter-carrier too. Every unit
typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large
apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and
provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location
accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) for
each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings such as two- or
three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash
containers similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is
often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing
noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets in
an apartment.
In some parts of the world, the word apartment is used generally to refer to a
new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the
word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An
industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly
called a loft.
When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family
member, the unit may be known as an in-law apartment or granny flat, though
these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters
rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the
basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites.
Staying in privately owned apartments rather than in a hotel is quickly becoming
popular with travelers.
Geography
Phoenix is located at 33�31'42" North, 112�4'35" West (33.528370�,
-112.076300�)GR1 in the Phoenix Valley or "Valley of the Sun" in central
Arizona. It lies at a mean elevation of 1,117 feet (340 m) in the heart of the
Sonoran Desert.
The Salt River course runs westward through the city of Phoenix; the riverbed is
normally dry except when excess runoff forces the release of water from the four
dams upriver. The city of Tempe has built two inflatable dams in the Salt River
bed to create a year-round recreational lake, called Tempe Town Lake. The dams
are deflated to allow the river to flow unimpeded during releases.
The Phoenix area is surrounded by the McDowell Mountains to the northeast, the
White Tank Mountains to the west, the Superstition Mountains far to the east,
and the Sierra Estrella to the southwest. Within the city are the Phoenix
Mountains and South Mountains. Current development (as of 2005) is pushing
rapidly beyond the geographic boundaries to the north and west, south through
Pinal County towards Tucson, and beginning to surround the large Salt River and
Gila River reservations.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 475.1
square miles (1,230.5 km�)—474.9 square miles (1,229.9 km�) of it is land and
0.2 square miles (0.6 km�) of it is water. The total area is 0.05% water.
The Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) (officially known as the
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale MSA), is the 14th largest in the United States, with a
total population of 3,251,876 at the 2000 U.S. Census. It includes the Arizona
counties of Maricopa and Pinal. Major cities include Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale,
Glendale, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, and Peoria. Several smaller communities are
also included, such as Queen Creek, Goodyear, Fountain Hills, Litchfield Park,
Anthem, Sun Lakes, Sun City, Sun City West, Surprise and Tolleson. The community
of Ahwatukee is a part of the City of Phoenix itself, but is almost entirely
separated from it by South Mountain.
Climate
Phoenix's arid climate is characterized by some of the hottest seasonal
temperatures anywhere. In fact, out of the world's large cities, only Riyadh and
Baghdad have higher average summer temperatures. The temperature reaches or
exceeds 100 �F (38 �C) on an average of 89 days during the year, including most
days from early June through early September. On June 26, 1990, the temperature
reached an all-time high of 122 �F (50 �C). The dry Arizona air makes the hot
temperatures more tolerable early in the season; however, the influx of
monsoonal moisture has been known to make August in Phoenix almost as humid as
summers in the Southeastern United States. On the other hand, mild, sunny
weather in the winter months makes the area a mecca for golfers and others
seeking to escape the cold typical of the northern U.S.
Phoenix sees some 300 sunny days per year and scant rainfall, the average annual
total at Sky Harbor International Airport being 8.4 inches (210 mm). March is
the wettest month of the year (1.07 inches or 27 mm). Rain is particularly
scarce from April through June. Although thunderstorms occur on occasion during
every month of the year, they are most common during the monsoon season from
July to mid-September as humid air surges in from the Gulf of California. These
can bring strong winds, large hail, or tornadoes. Winter storms moving inland
from the Pacific Ocean occasionally produce significant rains but occur
infrequently. Fog is observed from time to time during the winter months.
At the airport, the mean date of first frost is December 12 and the last is
February 7; however, these dates do not represent the city as a whole because
the frequency of freezes varies considerably among terrain types and elevations.
Some areas of Phoenix may see frost for a month or more before and after the
airport readings. The earliest frost on record occurred on November 3, 1946, and
the latest occurred on April 4, 1945. Successive winters without any frosts at
the airport have been recorded, and the longest period without a freeze
stretched from November 23, 1979 to January 31, 1985. The all-time lowest
temperature in Phoenix was recorded at 16 �F (-8.8 �C) on January 7, 1913.
Snow is extremely rare in the area, though still can occur from time to time.
Snowfall was first officially recorded in 1896, and since then accumulations of
0.1 inches (0.25 cm) or greater have occurred only seven times. The heaviest
snowstorm on record dates to January 20-21, 1937, when 1 to 4 inches fell (2 to
10 cm) in parts of the city and did not melt entirely for four days. Prior to
that, 1 inch (2.5 cm) had fallen on January 20, 1933. On February 2, 1935, 0.5
inches (1 cm) fell. Most recently, 0.4 inches (1 cm) fell on December 21-22,
1990. Snow also fell on March 12, 1917 November 28, 1919, and December 11, 1985.
Colleges and Universities
Public education in the Phoenix area is provided by over 30 school
districts.[5] The Phoenix Union High School District operates most of the public
high schools in the city of Phoenix.
The main institution of higher education in the area is Arizona State
University, with its main campus located in Tempe, and satellite campuses in
Phoenix and Mesa. ASU is currently one of the largest public universities in the
U.S., with a 2004 student enrollment of 57,543.
The University of Phoenix is also headquartered in Phoenix. This is the nation's
largest private, for-profit university with over 130,000 students at campuses
throughout the United States (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Mexico, and the
Netherlands.
There are also ten community colleges and two skills centers throughout Maricopa
County, providing adult education and job training.