Hi Samantha,

I really appreciate your long, in-depth explanation. And yes, I agree that some places aren’t quite safe to live in. However, if you aren’t doing well financially, these are some options that you may have to consider if you want to find housing.

Not everyone has much of a choice. My guy and I both work full time and still are struggling to afford a place to live. My credit score isn’t the best (which is a whole other barrier) but my boyfriend’s is pretty good. I graduated from a four year University with nearly $40,000 in student loan debt only to get a minimum wage job as a children’s residential counselor. Student loan payments are a huge expense and will be for quite a while. We share a car that’s nearly 20 years old which we paid cash for a few years ago. The spedometer and odometer stopped working about 6months ago at about 207k miles, it’s got an oil leak, the brakes wont stop making noise, the trunk is difficult to shut and it’s got a few other problems as well, but we dont have to make payments so we deal with it. So with student loan payments, gas, car insurance, food, a very basic cell phone and cell service (which is also used as our “computer”), other necessary incidentals like shampoo, laundry detergent, clothes here and there, toilet paper, etc. and a small self storage unit to protect the few important and irreplaceable items we dont want to risk damaging as we constantly move around, adding over 1000 dollars a month for rent is just not something we’re able to do apparently. Righr now we pay almost $700 a month to rent a room in some crappy apartments ran by a slumlord. There’s constant construction M-F starting at 8am. There’s cockroaches, termites, crime and everything is falling apart around us. Its a noghtmare here and even this arrangement took us months to find and was only a short term solution, the lease is up and we have to be out in lesss than a week. Before we found this place though we were living in our (very small) Toyota . Rent around this area is ridiculous, finding a studio for less than $1000 is nearly impossible with room rentals alone starting at about $700. However no one wants a couple renting a room or if they will consider it add at least another $200 per month making it nearly $1000 each month to rent less than 100 square feet of space. Renting a room can also be dangerous when you have to look online to find someone. We try to be responsible and careful but we’ve walked into a few very shady situations when meeting people for the first time. However if we dont give it a shot we dont know if we’re passing up something that would actually work out for us. But coming up with first months rent and deposit all at once is a huge challenge when trying to rent our own place. We’re talking coming up with over $2000 in cash to just move in in. We’ve gotten close but then our clutch went out on our car, costing almost $900. Before that, there was time we almost had it and our car was totaled by a driver who took off and was never found. Being broke we had only been paying for the most basic car insurance required by California law, thus we found out we were not covered at all for a hit and run. So even though we were not at fault at all according to police, our insurance wouldn’t pay a dime. Our car was completely totalled, air bags had deployed, front end was smashed into oblivion, and there was a large piece of metal stuck into our front tire on one end and still attached to the car on the other end which made it so the tire wouldn’t rotate an inch. The car wouldn’t budge and since we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford the tow truck cost we used aaa to get it towed to someones backyard.

Long story but what I’m trying to say is that it may be dangerous to live in since if these places recommended here but the alternative for some people is living outside without any shelter or locks, which is more dangerous. It’s also illegal where we are, (because that’s how you solve the homeless problem, right?).