The Boulevard, York

After living here a few months I can see why they constantly have to beg people to stay on. The rooms are decent for the price, for the same money you could do better in York. The location is good for both York uni and town so it's got that going for it (but there are at least four other student accommodation providers on the same road...). There are lots of small failings: shared kitchen was not even cleaned after summer and still had last year's dirty dishes in the cupboards, 'high speed internet' that's part of the reason for the hefty weekly cost was broken for weeks after arriving, tap water was also exceptionally bad quality for a while and a glass was enough to make a friend of mine vomit, collecting parcels from reception is a pain because the staff are a lazy skeleton crew who will lie to your face about not having any if they think you won't press them. Laundry is a massive con, same overpriced Circuit system as on the York campus except you also have to download a mandatory barely-functional app to use it here. Nothing terrible, just very poor for the price point. Of course the target audience for the Boulevard is Chinese students whose rich parents will pay over the odds for safe, all-inclusive and reasonably high quality accommodation, so if you're in the same position as them you could do worse. Keep this as your fallback option if no houses are available, you can't bear going back to campus and you're not rich enough for Vita Student down the road.

Boulevard is a nice place to live. It is safe and quiet, with a range of facilities. The rooms and kitchens are neat and tidy, however suffer from poor design in the same way as all English built houses do. The maintenance staff are good with regards to fixing certain things (broken freezer drawers etc) but non-existent in others, unless you hassle them for a while. Same as any landlord really. It is a comfortable place to live, but very little atmosphere. No real connection with other inhabitants here but that is not really an issue, if you want to be living somewhere close to university in comfort. The inclusion of the TV licence and kitchen cleaning fortnightly on top of water, gas and electricity included actually makes this place a similar price to living in a house in York with similar amenities. Slightly irritating to have to pay so much for laundry, but the prices are the same as on campus, so not much that can be done. Overall the staff are friendly and receptive to criticism, trying to make this a nice place to live for everyone.

Terrible experience living here! Wouldn't recommend it.