Mark T.
Yelp
TL;DR at bottom if you're not seeking a novella.
Affordable, private rooms in hostels are hard to come by. When I saw a room for one in a highly rated hostel for $47 a night, I happily jumped on it. Turns out it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Maybe I'm just getting older.
This hostel delivered on providing a safe and clean place to stay. However, when it comes to comfort and quality of sleep, it fell short. For me to get good quality sleep, it should be quiet, cool, dark, and with comfortable bedding. These could just be a me thing, so form your own judgments.
To start with the good: the hostel was clean and felt
safe. Access to the hostel and rooms are controlled with a passcode. This passcode changes on a regular basis. On the flip side, especially if you are in a shared room, anyone with the code can enter. If your roommate decides to share the code with a non-guest, they will have access until codes are changed. Same goes for someone who has supposedly checked out.
Location-wise, The hostel is fine if you rent a car or Uber. But, some general advice: Houston does not have particularly good public transportation, and there is a long-ish walk to downtown (and at night, it might be best not to walk the 1-2 miles even if you can). Rent a car or be prepared to Uber everywhere. If you rent, and want to sleep easy that you won't be liable for damage, pay the $10 extra for gated parking. While I had no issues, some painted lines would have been very helpful.
Where it comes to the less good:
Outside the window are two busy elevated highways with Incredibly bright LED lamps. The light filtering curtains let in far more light than is conducive to good sleep, to say nothing of the noise.
As for the bedding, the sheets were more than a little oversized for the mattress. As someone who tosses and turns a bit, halfway through the night these are bound to become a wrinkled, uncomfortable mess. The temperature does not help things, as at one point the thermostat read 77°. (To be fair, other nights were a few degrees cooler). This was in early November.
The room itself wasn't thought out very well either. The headboard and a tiny table with lamp (and outlet) are diagonal from you. Unless you leave your phone charging on the other side of the room, the power strip will "decorate" essentially the entire floor space.
Another issue: the bathrooms came perilously close to running flat out of TP. The stock was running low and not replenished for my entire stay. When I had to put a sign saying "No more TP" on the door to warn people, you know it's not a great situation. This shortage was true of both restrooms.
TL;DR:
Where it comes to the private room for one: An inexpensive, safe-seeming, and clean place to crash. But, the highways outside mean noise and bright light is a given with the poor curtains. Location is alright, it could be a lot worse, but not in downtown. Also, be ware of a deficit of TP!