Hello!

 

I was just wondering if anybody has any information about apartment living in Little Italy (avg price, vacancies, where to look, etc). I will be attending Cleveland State next fall and it seems Little Italy would be a great location being so close to the Healthline, University Circle, and Cleveland Heights. Thanks for any suggestions!

Hi townley, welcome to UrbanOhio! Little Italy can be difficult getting into because it's also a hot area for CWRU students to live. But since you've started your search early, you've probably increased your chances of finding a place. In fact, the place you may end up living probably isn't available now. But it would become available after CWRU finishes its spring semester and some rentals open up. Also, you might want to consider widening your search into University Circle (ie: Uptown, Hazel 8, Commodore Place, etc), which is just west of the RTA Red Line tracks. The zip code for Little Italy proper is 44106 which will aid you in some apartment search engines like padmapper.

 

Here are some rental buildings in Little Italy proper:

 

http://italiabldg.com/rental.php

 

http://murrayhillcondos.net/ (they have rentals such as this http://www.rentjungle.com/2-bed-2-0-bath-1570-sqft-1-800-rental-details/527eb8ae365724a93122f93b129e0837/)

 

http://www.rentjungle.com/2-bed-2-5-bath-1468-sqft-2-350-rental-details/6404c6172449c4fbf0b4d9127cf54bbe/

 

http://cleveland.en.craigslist.org/apa/4145455065.html

 

http://cleveland.en.craigslist.org/apa/4175153666.html

 

If you don't already live in Cleveland, my suggestion is to come here and walk around. You may find some rentals listed only by a "for rent" sign in the window or front yard of a duplex house. Unless you want to start to get on some waiting lists, you may have better luck in your search starting in the spring. But I and others here will be happy to help you refine your search in the meantime!

When I lived there 15 years ago it was almost exclusively word-of-mouth or signs in the front window.  And even then, you often needed a word-of-mouth reference from a neighborhood guy.  No landlord there wanted to field calls from the surrounding areas.  But times have probably changed somewhat.

The church, Holy Rosary, used to have a list as well.  Best bet are "for rent" signs in the window.

The church, Holy Rosary, used to have a list as well.  Best bet are "for rent" signs in the window.

 

Agreed. Walking is the best way to find properties. Also sometimes the restaurants have for rent signs up in the window or in the restaurant for the apartments above.

I have a couple friends that live around there.. and I used to deliver pizzas in the neighborhood for a few years. Its a cool part of Cleveland. Any of the side streets off Mayfield in little Italy are a good choice, Check out Murry Hill in our search. All older buildings.. but cool living. Defiantly a younger crowd, a lot of CWRU kids and cleveland heights locals.

My friends lived above La Dolce Vita on that corner. I think the landlord is a little kooky, I think his name is Terry something, but otherwise they seemed to have no serious complaints. I want to say they paid upper 800s for a two bedroom? I was not impressed with a lot of house/duplex apartments I saw on the side streets, but maybe there's some nice ones.

 

This is kind of a random, but I am gay white guy and maybe two years ago I was looking for an apartment in Little Italy with my then boyfriend, who was a black guy. I talked to the landlord of this http://goo.gl/maps/IXnYB one on the phone but just refereed to my boyfriend as my "roommate" just to be safe. So we drove there to meet him to check out the place one day, and right when he sees both of us together he kind of strangely says "I actually rented this apartment out already, but you can come look at it because we might have an opening in a few months" or something like that. I was totally confused and bummed, but looked anyway, and was then more bummed because I actually liked it a lot for the price range we had.

 

After that, maybe a week later, we checked out some dinky little house that was really not kept up well. The landlord actually ended up being a lesbian with a mixed race daughter, so she was cool with us, but she told us there was a "race" issue with some of the older landlords and such in Little Italy. I honestly never would have imagined it, but then after my experience with that one guy I am not sure. I've always sort of wondered if he just turned as away fast because either he could tell we were gay (which i don't think was really obvious, but we were gonna be living together) or because of his race, because after that he still had the for rent sign and such up. Anyone else ever hear or experience anything remotely similar?

I have no experience with it, but yes Little Italy has a history, and consequently the lingering effects of being an enclave of bigots.