for the new place the realtor suggested. I woke up in a panic, full of application/form anxiety. Which sent me into a tailspin when the printer decided not to work. But it’s in. So now I’m worried about things like them not liking my credit, or Nasty Mean Landlord saying Nasty Mean Things. But my part is done.

The new place is still not the grownup house. The stove and the washing machine are ancient (seriously, they’re probably older than I am. They’re like 1960s vintage chic. In the most awful way imaginable. I hope they break down the first week and have to be replaced. And the floral wicker hanging lampshade in the kitchen has GOT TO GO ASAP.) But there’s room to have all of our furniture. So I’m going with it.

And the neighborhood is… nonexistant. It’s a gated little apartment complex, the kind I swore I would never want to live in. But the next time you hear me complain about location, remind me that when I tried to get home last night, I had to stop my car in the middle of the street to move traffic cones that some drunk had decided it would be funny to put down the middle of the lane. And then when I went to bed, all I could hear was people throwing plastic drinking cups off their high rise balcony next to me into my alley. 23 months ago

^{Seriously? How often do people say that? This woman is incredible. She wins all the gold stars.}

I hadn’t given up the goal, but in the last few days, I had given up on actually trying to find anything. Then Thursday night I was talking to fiance on the phone, and he urged me to dust myself off and not turn into a sour grape quite so easily.

So this morning I looked at all the listings again, full of frustration that nothing was perfect. But I did find something that was comparable to where we are now, and would at least get us away from scummy leasing agent, so I put in an email to the same realtor we had last year (who had been so patient, and so wonderful to us then) asking if we could go see it.

She responded in twenty minutes (on a Sunday morning!) saying that the place wasn’t available to look at until I was already in Michigan, but what were our criteria again? So I emailed her back, and went to church.

When I got home, I had five more emails from her, all of them totally reasonable (if not perfect) suggestions. And one of them actually looks really promising. It’s no farther away from work for me than where we are currently, on a shuttle route to school for fiance, twice as big as where we are living now, 2 bedroom (so I can have my art studio space), and we would save $50 a month on the rent.

Fingers crossed, guys. This could be awesome. 23 months ago

We make too much money. No new apartment for us. 2 years ago

We’re not disqualified for fiance being a full time student.

Now to see if we can pass a credit check.

We’ll go down to the leasing office tomorrow.

^anxious2 years ago

I am tired of living in the student ghetto, and I’m tired of there being two of us in an apartment less than 400 square feet. A lot of my coworkers are homeowners; even the ones who make less than I do are settled into living situations that feel like “home”, rather than some place where we expect the landlord to want to rent fresh every year. (I seriously doubt my landlord is anxious for us to move… but given that she’s left the apartment in the hands of her realtor as “super”, I’m sure he’s anxious to have us leave, so that he can collect fresh on the realtor fees. It’s either that, or he just really is an honest-to-god dickbag… but it has to be one or the other, because he’s totally unhelpful in making the apartment livable.)

Of my more mobile coworkers (unmarried, new to the job, etc.) a lot of them rent much nicer apartments than ours, way north of town. This is not acceptable to me. Emotionally, I can’t handle suburbia. Financially, we’ve only had one car since the fiance’s caught fire several years ago, and we can’t afford either the cost of a car or a second gas bill for one. Because of this, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that we were stuck.

But.

For the last several months, I have watched construction on a new apartment unit fairly close to where I work. On Sunday on the way to church, I saw a sign saying that they were renting. Yesterday I started poking around online, and found that a 1 bedroom at this new building would be 200 more square feet, and $200.00 cheaper.

Umm… sold?

It’s down the street from where our former housemates now live. It’s close enough to work that I could bike there in 15 minutes, and do it all on side streets (no death!) and close enough to bike to church as well. That will cut our current gas bill down to… almost nothing? It’s also easy bike distance to a 24-hour independent coffee shop (although not a good night-bike neighborhood… that main street is both fast, and not the safest of places)

A non-profit is spearheading this project, part of it’s foundational mission to create affordable housing. As such, some of the apartments will be subsidy, which means that some of the people who would otherwise be interested, are going to be scared off because of “those people”. But the reality is that we’d already be living in one of “those people” projects, except we don’t qualify for subsidy because fiance’s a full time student. And since I work at a school that is 99% project kids, and lived in the ghetto in NYC, I’m not particularly thrown off by any of that. I will gladly trade it for the convenience to work and to the city proper.

Given last year’s tax return we just barely qualify for financial requirements for the apartment, which is a little scary. I am worried that other people with both partners working real jobs will edge us out. I worry that people who have been following this apartment project since it first cut ground will have already put their name in. I worry that our petty and stupid super will give us a bad recommendation because he doesn’t like me (seriously. he’s said things about my mother. It’s ugly). I worry that my last NYC landlord will say bad things about me because I broke lease at the last minute to move to Texas.

Basically, I just worry that it will all fall through, and we won’t get it.

But man, do I want to live there. 2 years ago