The Stax

I stayed at The Stax last year as a freshman at UW. I paid over $80 a month just for utilities for a studio, on top of rent. You also get charged for “amenities,” which were basically the two rooftop chairs that were never clean. Laundry was another $10 per load. It has been two months since I moved out, and I still have not received my $1,000 security deposit back because of the “high volume” of move-outs. The area was constantly noisy with construction and fire trucks day and night. When I first moved in, my window got sunlight, but by the time I moved out, there was a wall three feet away blocking it. It is not worth the money. It might say $1,400 on the website, but you will end up paying over $1,600 a month once everything is added. If you are a freshman, please think twice before signing here.

If you have laundry needs, please know that laundry here is $3 a load. Drying is $3 for 60 minutes, and unless you have very few clothes, it's at least $10+ to wash and dry them (I paid $9 for clothes that were still dripping). The soundproofing is terrible, unless you live on the top floor you can hear people walking upstairs, but it gets hot in the summer. You can hear cars and fire trucks whizzing by at night, and even though the windows are closed, you can still occasionally hear the lunatic at the next intersection yelling all night. The doorknob on the front door has been broken for about a month now and still hasn't been fixed.