About two weeks ago I moved out of my mom's house (temporary home base for the last 18 months) and into a new apartment with my partner. I'm so relieved to have found a place that is safe, decent, near public transportation, and - major bonus - full of natural light and high ceilings. Truly a gem in the middle of a lot of crappy options. I am still pinching myself that 1) this place exists, and 2) we got it!!!
The housing situation in the Bay Area is competitive, restrictive, and depressing to say the least. It is SO EXPENSIVE and honestly what you get for your money is pitiful in most cases. Here's a sampling of some of the places we looked at in our search:
Apartment 1: Located in the Outer Richmond in San Francisco (read: cold and foggy and not on the BART line, so one of the more "affordable" places in the city). $2,200/month for a studio consisting of a converted garage with one tiny window, a tiny bathroom, a double burner hotplate and a mini-fridge "kitchen", and a murphy bed that pulled down from the wall. Nope!
Apartment 2: Located one block away from Lake Merritt in Oakland, seemingly a great spot but this is an area where the neighborhood can vary vastly from one corner to the next. This was on one bad corner that's for sure! I understand why there were no photos of the outside of the place on Craigslist. As we approached there was a lady in panties and a fishnet top with her boobs hanging out walking into the liquor store on the bottom floor of the building. Across the street was a parking lot full of dudes loitering and heaps of trash. After a few minutes the lady came out of the liquor store and plopped down on her mattress on the opposite corner of the street, put on some headphones, and started smoking a joint. Next to the liquor store was an establishment that was operational, had a street number, but all the windows were blacked out and there was no identifying sign of what was going on in there. Not good. The inside of the unit had been completely remodeled and that, plus the fact that my partner's school is nearby and I often run at the lake, is what had attracted us initially. We never even made it inside, sending a polite email to the listing agent saying it just wasn't the right spot for us. Cost? $2,000/month for a 2 bedroom (600 square feet). Right...
Apartment 3: Located in El Cerrito, adjacent to highway 80. $1,950/month for a 2 bedroom plus one month free rent if you signed a 16-month lease. Totally new interior, new appliances, looked really lovely...but surely there must be a catch at that price, and why on earth would anybody offer a signing bonus here in the landlord's paradise?? Sure, the place was right next to the freeway's sound barrier wall, and the neighborhood was older and pretty humble, but what could be the issue? All the bars on the windows of every house around? Maybe... The neighbor's yard full of pit bulls and rottweilers and neglected looking poodles, all on short chains, aggressively barking nonstop? Who knows. There were about 8 other couples waiting to see the place, and for us the paranoia that something was fundamentally wrong to offer the place at that price was too much. Next!
Thankfully, by some great Craigslist miracle, we stumbled across our current place and managed to make a deposit and get in an application before they could show it to anyone else. You have to act fast here, that's for sure. I feel much like I did back in Maputo, where we had an excellent apartment at a price that we were afraid to disclose less someone show up at the landlord's door and make a higher offer. At least here in California there are binding leases and what not, although I shudder to think what will happen when it comes time to renew and most certainly the amount will be adjusted up according to "current market value".
There's a high price to pay to live in the Bay Area, and it's only getting harder. I've definitely thought about moving somewhere else over the last 18 months, and even did some (fruitless) job applications in places as diverse as Houston, Chicago, and Washington DC. But seemingly it's in the cards to be here for the near future, which makes me happy, as this Cali life is pretty incredible and I'm excited for this new chapter to kick off in our new apartment.
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