Beautiful SanFran : The Apartment Hunt

OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS!

Today's rant is about how difficult and stressful finding an apartment in San Francisco is, and exactly how I'm going about it as an 18 year old university student who has no stable in-come and no idea what she is doing!

My friend and I decided a few months ago that we would try finding an apartment together for the upcoming fall semester. We first decided to room together and try for on-campus housing, but once those dreams were viciously crushed, our real housing hunt commenced.

I started digging around the internet, trying to sort out the sketchy apartment sites versus the reliable ones. We emailed a few places that looked suitable for a duo. Unfortunately, from the first possibility we were informed we had to pay a fee to not only apply, but to also view the apartment. We decided against that, and shortly after, we received notification that the second apartment we were interested in had been taken already.

As I continued to stress, Hannah found two more students who were looking to room with two others. From there, we joined forces and continued the search. They found a place that is about as close to campus as it gets. It's located on Turk and Masonic, which is about 20 paces to the right of campus. The apartment: a two bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and kitchen. It costs a grand total of $3250 a month. Yes. PER MONTH. Working 25 hours a week at Starbucks, I make about $600 a month. Split among 4 people comes to a total of $812.5 per person, plus $10 each for utilities.

San Francisco is the most expensive city to live in, in the United States. Because of this, I'm left broke and relying on my parents to fund me. How is anyone able to afford a decent college education while still affording to live anywhere but a cardboard box? Independently I would never be able to afford a life I had dreamed for myself. Even with my parent's contributions, we're finding it difficult to make it from payment to payment. I'm so lucky we somehow make it work!

Anyway, we were up against one other group of three who was interested in renting the apartment. We, fortunately, were offered the place. Mind you, this apartment had not been advertised ANYWHERE and it already had two groups interested in renting. The competition for decent housing is extremely pronounced in San Francisco, making it all that more difficult to live here.

We toured the apartment on Wednesday (4/15) and were offered the apartment Thursday (4/16) after we vigorously sought to fill out our applications the evening of the 15th. We plan on signing the lease Saturday the 18th. By signing now, I have to pay rent for all of summer, however I will not be living here over the summer. That's an extra $4000 including the security deposit. But this place is such a nice deal and a perfect location. I couldn't turn it down!

This has been one of the most stressful experiences. I'm an 18 year old freshmen student living in this city just trying to find out how and where I'm going to live to fulfill my goals of attending university. I've had to figure out how to fill out an application with co-signers, figure out how to pay for the place, and now work on moving in. Why was this not taught in high school?