Posts written by Kat Arizan
Friday, March 16 2007
One Step Up From Living In a Box: Apartment Hunting For the Uninitiated
Getting into a cozy place like those
in Beacon Hill can prove difficult.
I had high hopes when I started looking for an apartment. Images of polished antique hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies, and a gorgeous view filled my eyes; I walked around in a perpetual daze, imagining how great life would be next year, when I had my own big, luxurious apartment. The first day I sat down to start calling realtors, I was so excited—I arranged my laptop neatly on the table of my common room, opened Craigslist and iCal and set my phone neatly beside it. I had three clean sheets of paper in a precise stack (I even picked them up and tapped them against the table to make sure they were exactly lined up) and a sharpened pencil. I was so organized that I took a moment to simply stare at the fruits of my labor. In my mind, I’d already found an apartment, signed the lease, and moved in—but in reality, I still had to make the calls. I picked up the phone and called the first number on my list, certain in a few minutes, I’d have about thirty apartments to visit the next day. It rang and rang. I had a big smile on my face.
“Hi, my name’s Kat and I’m calling about an apartment listing on Craigslist—”
The man cut me off by growling something indecipherable down the line.
“Pardon me?” I asked.
“Student?”
He wanted to know if I was a student. “Yes?” I said, hesitantly.
“No students,” he snarled, and hung up. When I say hung up, I mean that he slammed the phone down so hard that I can only hope he hurt himself doing it. I blinked a few times and sat there thinking: what the fuck? For a city that states that half of its population is comprised of college students, the landlords and realtors in Boston really aren’t that receptive to living next door to us.
