Chapter 2 - The Great Housing Search

Claudia:

"It's politics, I think," my roommate and friend Aya told me when Liza and I got upstairs. We were leaning on Aya's bed in our dorm room.

"Well, what do you expect with that excuse in the White House?" Liza quipped. We all laughed a little at that.

"Make the rich richer."

"We have a month to find another place," I groaned, flopping on my bed.

"I picked up the apartment ads in the paper today," Aya held up a copy of the Twin City Gazette. "Hey, if we play this smart, we might be able to pool our cash together for an apartment."

"True..." Liza nodded.

I work part-time at an art store, while Liza works in a used bookstore on Saturdays.

Aya works at the campus bookstore. What we had to do now was measure our rents and our personal expenses with our combined incomes.

E-mails back and forth between Liza and Katie on August 9, 2003:

Wmynpower to Spiker:

Heyy there, Liza! Glad we made it home all right! Any edible food on the way? What a trip to Italy; we have to do it again sometime!

I'm happy that you were able to find your great-aunt; she did look a lot like you.

Things have settled down here in the nation's capital and I start classes the first week in September.

My roommate, Vivia and I went to Dupont Circle last weekend and went to that bookstore I've told you about. They've expanded on it even more.

There's a copy of Revolution From Within with Gloria Steinem's autograph on it! Of course I bought a copy.

I'm working now on a part-time contracted job with the Department of Education.

It's almost like working for the U.S. Government, but it's not a permanent job; they say it'll last a year or so.

Two more years and we'll be college GRADUATES! Can you believe it?

I plan to go to law school as you know. Georgetown U. has one of the best law libraries in this country.

Sooo, how are you settling back in Granite U? Weather turning cold yet in Minnesota? How are Claudia and Aya?

Love, Katie

Spiker to Wmynpower:

Hey, Katie! Good hearing from you! Great as our trip to Europe was, it sure is great to be home again.

It's still warm here in Minnesota. Claudia and Aya are doing all right; Claudia was in Connecticut visiting her 'rents also and we ran into each other at the airport and lucked out on the same flight, so we flew back together.

When we got back, though, we discovered part of our dorm, Van Gogh Hall is being minioned out to some private industry group and we're all going to have to move out of there in a month, so Claud, Aya, and I have been scouring the apartment ads all week.

We want to try our own apartment with us sharing maybe a two or three bedroom place since there's a long waiting list for dorms.

This other friend of ours, Louisa is also looking for an apartment. Did I tell you about her? She's also into acting like me.

This year Granite U is having a play on Eleanor Roosevelt and I'm definitely trying out.

I'm debating between going for Eleanor's part...but I'd have to wear high heels to look tall like her since I'm only five-four...or going for the role of a friend of Eleanor's, Lorena Hickock.

But until school starts, the four of us have to hustle to get a place.

I know I want to be settled and unpacked by the time classes start again.

Hey, I'm getting sleepy, so I'm turning in. I'll ee again really soon.

Love, Liza

Liza:

"...with the one bath and two bedrooms...it's about thirteen hundred including utilities," the woman finished as Claudia, Aya, and I peered around the fourth potential apartment of the day.

I nodded and took some more notes in my pad. We'd found a few leads...but none that would be IT yet.

"Thirteen hundred's stretching it a bit," Claudia told us once we were back in the car.

We were looking at places on the bus line since Granite U does have a shuttle bus system for students.

The car we share is good, but we wanted to be near public transportation in case the car ever breaks down.

We were also looking for something that wouldn't stretch our budget too tightly...something that left us money to save and something that didn't charge utilities separately.

It also got us thinking about the bathroom. So far all the places we'd looked at only had one bathroom.

"That's going to be hard, three people for one bathroom," Aya put in as we stopped at a roadside diner for a quick lunch before resuming our great housing search.

So far between newspapers, two of them so far and an apartment booklet I'd picked up, we had seven more on our list. The thought of it was enough to make me sleepy.

Claudia:

I leafed through the paper more as we sipped sodas and had fries at the diner.

For some reason, I found myself looking at pictures of houses as well as apartments.

"Boy, I'd love to get a house like that once I get my art career established," I pointed to one picture of a house near one to the Great Lakes with a huge picture window on one side.

"Wow, that's a nice one..." Liza murmured as she and Aya peered over.

What about...I thought as I peered at a section of houses for rent.

I noticed that some of the prices went as low as a thousand rentwise. With the three of us contributing around three hundred a month...

"Hey, look at some of the prices on the houses for rent!" I held up the paper again. "If the three of us split the rent, we could do it!"

"What?" Aya peered over.

"We could rent a house with two bathrooms and each have our own rooms," I went on, growing excited by the idea. "Look at some of these; they go as low as a thousand a month. We could each pitch in about three-fifty a month."

Liza pulled out her pad and Aya pulled out her calculator.

"About three-twenty, maybe?" Aya mused.

"My friend Christie would be able to figure this out in her head," Liza laughed. "She's super at math."

"Stacey's the same way," I chuckled.

I wondered how my friend Stacey McGill and Christie were doing. They had been at the top of their high school classes. Stacey's deciding whether to be an engineer or a doctor.

"If we ask Louisa..." Aya put in.

"Yeah, let's ask her!" Liza suggested, her brown eyes wide with excitement. "That way, it'd be split four ways. If the rent is about a thousand, we'd each be paying only two hundred and fifty a month! Then we'd really be able to save some real moo-lah!"

"Good idea..." I nodded.

Louisa's a good friend and the four of us get along really well.

Plus if we lived in a house, we wouldn't be on top of each other the way I've heard some apartment roommates end up being.

"So...let's go talk to her before we look further," Aya suggested as we got up to go.

Liza:

"Can we afford it?" My roommate Louisa sat on her bed and peered up at us uncertainly through her wire-rimmed glasses.

"Yeah, if it's the four of us," Claudia told her. "We were looking at this..." she held out the paper and let Louisa leaf through it. "A lot of the prices of small four bedroom houses around here are just a little over a thousand."

"They'll need references, won't they?" Louisa asked.

"Yeah, they probably will," Aya nodded.

"But all of us have some. You could list your boss at work." We all were talking on references to list.

I know a lot of landlords want that...I guess to make sure their renters aren't shady, into drugs, or have criminal records or anything like that.

I, for one, could list my dramatics instructor, Ms. Lanwin as well as my friends and some of their moms.

Claudia put in that she'd gotten to know a lot of the parents she'd baby-sat for back in Stoneybrook, Connecticut as well as her friends and their folks.

"We should write this all down..." I suggested and we did.

I could tell Louisa liked our idea. Now if we could just find that house.

We pulled ourselves out of bed early the next morning to continue our search. We had three weeks to zero hour from the dorm and two weeks before classes started again.

This time I drove and we searched for several houses we'd circled. We'd called most of the places too.

At one house, the landlord lived there and we gathered that she had a lot of ideas about how she wanted the renters to live, so we nixed that place and moved on.

One thing we decided right there was that we didn't want a place where the landlord lived so they'd be breathing down our necks, telling us little stuff like don't eat in the rooms or that we couldn't use the bathroom after such and such an hour at night.

"She kind of kept looking at us funny anyway..." I rolled my eyes. "I wonder if it was that purple streak in my hair."

"Probably the fact that we're college students," Aya put in.

It took until early afternoon, but finally, we found a place! One...it was just over a thousand dollars rent a month. Two...it had two bathrooms.

Three...the landlord didn't live there; the owners were an easygoing couple who owned several houses and rented them to college students on a regular basis.

And best of all, it was a four bedroom, so we'd each have our own rooms.

"The Van Gogh dorm?" the wife of the couple asked.

"Yeah..." We nodded.

"Really too bad..." she murmured sympathetically as she handed us a copy of the lease to look over and sign.

Another ee on the evening of August 14, 2003:

Spiker to Wmynpower, Numbers compuserve (Christie), Applyoosa (Dekeisha), Sayitwithee (Whitney):

WE DID IT! Claud, Aya, Louisa, and I found a place! It's actually a house. I mean, we're renting it and splitting the rent four ways.

No, we're not quite homeowners yet...oh, well, I can still dream.

But get this...for just over a thousand bucks, we each pay only about two seventy-five a month, so it doesn't bust our budgets and we can still have extra money for occasional movies and good stuff like that and money to save, not to mention cash for airfare to fly out to visit you guys and my folks.

It's a nice place, very airy and has four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

We signed the lease late this afternoon and we move in another week! Ohhh, I'm so psyched! Right now, Claudia's e-mailing her friends with the news too.

As soon as I'm connected in my new home, I'll send all of you the snail mail address to the place. Talk later!

Love, Liza