Room-hunting opens a window on San Francisco

I figured the odds might be against us this week, as we headed north to San Francisco to find a place for my daughter to live. I knew that what she needed — a safe neighborhood, not too far from work and school, with nice roommates and a six-month lease — might not come cheap.

But I didn’t realize that a decent room for a college student in a city crammed with professional tenants might be harder to find in four days than a cool spot on a 110-degree day in Northridge.

We spent hours navigating tricky streets in pouring rain, traipsing through stove-less kitchens and windowless bedrooms, chummying up to would-be roommates whose “thumbs up” might be a ticket to an empty bedroom and shared bathroom in an already overcrowded apartment.

The Bay Area is a “landlord’s market, with rents rising faster and occupancy rates higher than anywhere else in California.” I read that on a real estate blog.

I could have figured it out on my own by scrolling through Craigslist “housing” offers — where a garage parking spot on Nob Hill was renting for almost as much as a small Los Angeles apartment.

I learned to decipher the lingo of Craigslist ads:

Cozy means small, and small means closet. Sunny might mean a single window, with a view of your neighbors’ trash. And 420-friendly means … well, if you can’t translate that, the apartment is probably not for you.

And we learned to recognize the scams: The couple dispatched to a church mission in Costa Rica, the woman caring for her dying mother in Canada, the husband assigned to a “United States Diplomatic Mission in Nigeria.” All offering to rent out a “lovely home” for $800 — in neighborhoods where everything else rents for about $3,000.

Just send first and last month’s rent and a $600 security deposit and they’ll send you the keys, sight unseen, the postings promise. Anyone who falls for that must be incredibly dumb, I thought.

Until I realized my daughter had responded to one — with a cheerful, hopeful email message, asking to see the bargain apartment.

The Nigerian diplomat never responded. And I felt oddly disappointed.

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It’s scary how stiff the competition for housing is for young people like my daughter. According to the U.S. census, San Francisco County has the state’s highest percentage of “nonfamily householder not living alone.”

Almost 15% of its residents live with someone not related to them — roommates, landlords or strangers with private bedrooms and shared kitchens and baths.

In a city flooded with single adults willing to double and triple up, landlords don’t have to take a chance on a 20-year-old college student with no car and a part-time job.

Scrolling through Craigslist, I fell hard for some apartments and tried to imagine my daughter in unlikely spots:

Would she like to live near Haight Street with an easygoing 50-year-old lesbian “friend of Bill,” whose “homey” two-bedroom apartment has bay windows, a big kitchen and fireplace in the living room?

Or rent the master bedroom in a “fantastic” loft near Golden Gate Park, with hardwood floors, a private bathroom, two closets with full-length mirrors and two male roommates whose interests include playing guitar, snowboarding, flamenco dancing and planning BBQs?

I found myself obsessed with the endless stream of postings, not just for the opportunities they might offer my daughter — she might learn to compost or become a flamenco dancer! — but for the window they offer me on the city that my daughter has grown to love.

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I remember trying to rent an apartment when my husband and I moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles in 1979. We studied newspaper ads and cruised neighborhoods. More than once, when we showed up, an apartment with a “vacancy” sign was suddenly not vacant for us.

It took us a while to realize that some landlords near my job in Van Nuys had an unspoken rule against renting to blacks.

Maybe that’s what fascinates me about Craigslist; it allows a bluntness we couldn’t manage back then. Some might call it discrimination, but when you’re hunting for housing, it plays like candor:

Male only. Prefer Asian. Mature tenants. No partiers or smokers.

We could cross those off our list and move on.

Even beggars can be choosy on Craigslist, like the “warm, friendly, fit, female over 45 seeking a household that is peaceful, neat, relatively clean with roommates who are nonsmokers, light if any alcohol consumers, use no drugs, do not sit consistently in front of a television set and have a household that is quiet after 10:30 p.m. and before 7 a.m.”

She wants “friendly, considerate roommates ... in a drama-free space,” she wrote.

Don’t we all. Her honesty might narrow her offers, but up her chance for success and comfort.

And while my daughter and I came home without an apartment, we’re smarter now about searching for one — and grateful to those Craigslist posters who were upfront about what they want and offer.

No need to waste our time chasing down options like this, from a married couple willing to rent a bedroom in their home to a student for $600 a month. “No guests … . No drugs, smoking, alcohol, party, pets, or other things that will be considered not good for getting along with each other in common sense such as dancing, singing loudly.”

Or this, from a fun-loving crew of young professionals, screening applicants for a room in their apartment with a Friday night open house — “bring your own booze, drink some of ours” — and a warning:

“We’d like to Facebook stalk you a bit, so please provide a link to your unblocked profile.… Anyone with a ‘cellphone in the mirror’ profile photo will be disqualified immediately,” they wrote.

I had to laugh at their litmus test.

But there’s a “housing wanted” section on the Craigslist website, and a creative writing major upstairs in her room still looking. Now that is a perfect match.

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