I just want to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread - even the Alief and curry jokers.
I just spent two days looking at about 8-10 different apartment complexes in the Sugar Land, Stafford, Missouri City area. And we even looked at one place in South Houston.
Using some of the advice here, we looked at a place near the Hindu shrine in the unincorporated Fifth Street area.
We looked at a couple places in Sugar Land but mainly a place across from Fluor. That place looked to be at least 20-30 years old but had been remodeled. It was the only complex we looked at that I would consider to be walkable with a gigantic HEB across the street. And it was just a couple stop lights away from the Sugar Land Town Center.
Then we went down to Sienna Plantation and looked at a few places in there. The leasing agent at the first place was an Aggie and told us some good Aggie stories which my daughter enjoyed. The next two places were essentially identical. The Villas and the place across the street not only had the same floorplans but, had the same fixtures and the same prices.
On the way back to College Station, we stopped by The Vinings as recommended on this thread and they had no availability until late August.
Heading north from The Vinings, I figured out that Dulles turns into Kirkwood and I realized that we were back in the vicinity of Camden Sugar Grove (as recommended in this thread) so, we stopped in there. When we walked through the front door, my daughter got super excited because one of her Aggie friends was working as a leasing agent there. The apartment complex wasn't any different than any of the others per se but, the experience of being shown around by a friend was pretty good. One unique feature that complex had was an indoor basketball half-court with a wood floor.
As we headed north and tried to work our way back to Beltway 8, we drove through Alief. Wow. It's amazing what a difference a couple miles can make. I can't decide which part was the highlight of our run through Alief - seeing 4 kids almost get run over as they ran through traffic, or seeing the apartment complex that was partially burned out and had a gaping hole in the building.
Almost forgot to mention the curry. As we were driving around through South Houston, Stafford, Missouri City, etc., we didn't see any grocery stores. Eventually we saw an Indian specialty store or two and eventually we saw a carniceria but, no big grocery store. Finally, in Sugar Land, we saw the gigantic HEB. We had a little food desert discussion and we also saw a number of Indian fast food places. In fact, there were a couple of them that I think I could probably make work in Bangalore. To my disappointment, I didn't see any Goan places. We also saw many ethnic stores in Alief but I told my daughter she'd need to work on getting her concealed carry license before trying out any of the Nigerian places. She didn't really appreciate that comment.
Again, thanks for the help since this was one area of Houston, I was not familiar with.
