Like many Johns Hopkins students, I rented from The Charles because it was directly across the street from the campus, and because Baltimore is generally not a safe place to walk around, day and night. What I didn't know was that The Charles is a categorically bad apartment. Here's a list:

1) BUILDING AGE: The Charles is a very old property. Older than dirt. You can tell by scraping an object against the walls: they have been covered by layers of weak plaster and paint. Your apartment will be covered with plaster dust that no amount of cleaning will remove. The plaster itself bubbles up in the bathrooms, swelling to alarming sizes.

2) POOR & INCOMPETANT MAINTENANCE: The building is poorly maintained. In the summer of 2004, I woke up one morning to a loud series of thuds coming from my bathroom. I went in to find that the plaster bubble which had been growing for the past month ruptured, filling my tub with big plaster rocks. I called maintenance and reported the problem, only to be told that it couldn't be fixed. Apparently, a water pipe in the exterior walls of the bulding had ruptured, and would cost an exhorbitant amount to fix (money The Charles' management does not have), so the solution was for the maintenance personnel to leave a large industrial fan in my bathroom for a week to dry the wet ceiling plaster. They then plastered a thin layer over the gaping hole, which promptly collapsed again a month later. If your apartment develops a problem (and it will), photograph the evidence.

In the spring of 2005, The Charles announced it would be running new hot water pipes through certain units, mine being one of them. They did not, however, provide a reasonable timetable. I was surprised to find, after classes one day, that the staff had taken all my things out of the closet and basically gutted the surfaces and shelving. My things were covered in copious amounts of plaster dust. Several days later, I return home to find my door wide open and no one in there. All the furniture was in complete disarray. A new pipe hung down from the ceiling and passed into the floor, nowhere near my closet (which is why they had gutted it earlier.) Nothing had been stolen, but when I asked the maintenance crew why they didn't lock up, they just muttered something about going to dinner. Weeks passed, and they finally fixed the holes up with foam filler. They came into my apartment early in the morning when my boyfriend and I were both in bed, sleeping, in various states of undress, without knocking. The Charles will not repair anything in a timely manner because 1) they don't have any money, and 2) the maintenance staff are lazy.

3) LACK OF SECURITY: The Charles basement is shared by P.J.'s bar; the two are connected by a hallway and a door that is supposed to remain closed at all times, accessible only to residents. Frequently, this door is propped open. People enter through PJ's main entrance and are able to gain access to The Charles through this route, bypassing the locked front door. In the spring of 2005, someone did just this, came up to my floor, and murdered Linda Trinh, a fellow Hopkins student who lived across the hall. It took a murder to get the management to upgrade security features(changing the locks on the doors, installing a round the clock security guard at the front), but these changes were temporary. After the press died down, the guard was removed and the door was propped open again. Apparently, the life a student was not enough to justify the expense of half-decent security.

In short, do not live here for the sake of the easy commute to campus. It's not worth the loss of privacy and security--you do not want to move into a building that is largely decrepit and beyond fixing.

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