Affordable Apartment Hunting

When you are looking for an apartment in an overly-crowded city with a high standard of living, your life can quickly become frustrating and unbearable. I lived in New York City for about 8 years, so I know this rule of modern life well. However, I was much younger then, and I’m trying to be more zen about things these days. Though the San Francisco Bay area is giving me a run for my money – literally.

Tiny 1-bedroom apartments in decent neighborhoods tend to go for a minimum of $1300. 2-bedrooms are $1500 and up. The further you get from “decent” and the closer you get to “I think I might be able to buy some cocaine on the street near here”, the cheaper it gets. Sad to say, I am not hip enough to live in a neighborhood that lights up like Christmas on the police’s Crime Tracker website. I am just not that tough.

I think that knowing and admitting your weaknesses are the keys to all success in life. If you know that something is not right for you, then listen to that instinct. There are things that can, and should, be gotten over, like the fear of public speaking. The fear of being mugged is not one of them. Know the difference and be okay with it. Some people have a commitment to living in fringe neighborhoods, I am not one of them. Perhaps this will harm my street cred as an anthropologist, but I don’t care. There’s a difference, in my mind, between a field site and a home site. What I could put up with for a short time while doing research, I couldn’t necessarily live with interminably.

We saw some things that we could barely afford, but were lovely. And I mean lovely. If we had taken the apartment we had been offered at first, we would be living large, but without any leftover money for food. Which is a potential problem, don’t you think?

So, in addition to knowing what you can live with, you probably need to know what is essential and what is simply craving. Do you need a fancy new refrigerator? Probably not. French doors leading out to a huge patio? Nope. A place that would really wow them at dinner parties? Uh-unh. Stick to the basics: affordable without taxing your monthly income, safe, clean and nice. I’ll leave the fancy and the grand to the Joneses, and sock the extra $800/month away for vacations. (We all have our vices.)

We’re now waiting to sign a lease on a very affordable 2-bedroom on a cool street, away from campus and from the undergrads. Tips on moving in with your significant other will no doubt follow in the next few weeks.