By far the funniest (or scariest, if you really need a place) part of the search is the bachelor 'suites' with a microwave and hotplate meant for students who want to be as close to technically homeless as possible. The sheer number of terrible apartments for inflated prices is an argument for rent control. A landlord, if he is unscrupulous and greedy enough, will charge 200 dollars a month for a jail cell – and most likely charge above and beyond that figure once the market comes to accept it as 'the way things are'.
My own search is pretty desperate, and hopeless, and I suffer for it every day, but now and then I see something funny, funny if only because the alternative (accepting it as real, not raging at it) is not as healthy as having a good laugh. Like this new building in my city that just came up awhile ago, and seems to have been constructed to house either the elderly, the insane, artists, or the chronically out of touch. Here's what $755 a month, before bills, will get you these days:
Mind you this is a six or seven story building. It seems like it was built by architecture interns on a bender. It has no elevator, there is no chance of having internet or cable, and fuck you if you have a car. Now, it may be part of some kind of ecological-minded living arrangement for hardcore vegans, hippies, and activists. It may be that but on the other hand, why does a new building, which has gotten in my way in its construction phase, have no option for high speed (aka - 'normal') internet? This isn't the 1970s. No elevator is healthy. Nonsmoking is healthy. Everything else, it seems, is a mess. This is the kind of shit that creates squatters and the homeless. This is the kind of wasteful and stupid market, nourished on helplessness and apathy, that creates the landowners you've known your whole life.
Ask yourself: why does it have to be like this? Why is nobody looking out for rental tenants? How many bastard landlords must a man suffer, until he becomes one himself?
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