View of New York Skyline at Night
Photo by: ajagendorf25, Creative Commons
I never thought I'd have the opportunity to get to intimately know the homeless people of New York City, but here I am faced with the prospect of sleeping on the streets.
Ever since I started college, I had always imagined I would move out of my school's on-campus housing by Junior year. Juniors have last priority in choosing dorms, so faced with the prospect of having to live in a crappy place far away from campus I figured I could find an equivalent or better place closer to school. Also, my school rips people off in terms of rent and on top of that crams two people to a tiny room; by getting an apartment, I figured I could save some money and get my own room. In my mind so many benefits lay in store for me, and I was excited at the prospect of having my own place. Little did I know how difficult it would be to find an apartment!
My initial plan was to live with some floormate friends from Freshman year with whom I had already lived. Since they lived on the east coast and were relatively close to NYC (closer than me anyways), I had hoped things would work out relatively easily. However, last spring I was studying abroad in London, they were in Florence, and everyone else was back in NYC so it was difficult to keep in touch. While I was travelling Europe during spring break, I had the chance to meet up with them and asked them if I could join their apartment search, but they already had a group of three; they said they would try to look for a four-person apartment, but seeing as how New York apartment searches are notoriously difficult, suggested I have a backup plan. Unfortunately, I am not living with them next semester, but seeing as how they warned me and the fact that we did not maintain regular contact, I cannot say I am surprised things worked out the way they did.
With that option gone, I reached out to Sam and Ricky -- we had all studied abroad in London together and I had gotten close to them over the semester. Thankfully, they accepted me which was fortunate because Ricky was on his way to NYC at that moment to find an apartment. At that point I thought I was saved and would have a place to live next year, especially because Ricky had the help of Li, a friend of ours who is currently working as a broker. But I must have underestimated the New York housing market because after two weeks of hard searching nothing came up, and Ricky had to leave the City because he had something important to attend to back home.
So here we are now without a place to live. We are currently trying to come up with some kind of game plan to tackle this issue before the semester starts, but I am not sure what is going to happen next.
The City is a harsh and cruel mistress.
-Emoinacloset
