My Santa Cruz Craigslist Housing Nightmare

“Any girl I bring back here will immediately leave and probably call the police” I mutter to myself as I drag my Prius up the steep dilapidated driveway. I continue driving until I reach the top of the hill. Jeremy walks up to my car to greet me. He looks like he’s in his early 50’s, pretty average looking white guy. “You must be Phil…”

School Starts in two weeks and I’m desperately looking for off-campus housing. I am shit out of luck. I scour Craigslist obsessively, refreshing my browser every couple hours.

1) The Perfect Situation House

I arrive at a house near the boardwalk. The house looks clean enough. Everything smells decent. The roommates seem really nice. They are three guys. All of them are students. They are all a little bit older, all around my age (25). We sit on the couch and talk for a little while. Everything seems to be a match. They have another person scheduled, but that’s merely a formality. I walk out confidently assuming that I will get the place.

I’m already visualizing how I’m going to arrange my furniture. I imagine which pictures I will hang. I think about how nice the short commute to school will be…

As I walk back to my car I see an extremely beautiful girl walking towards the front door of the house. My heart sinks. She looks up from her phone and smiles at me. “Is this the open house?” she asks.

I call the roommates several times over the next few days. No answer. None of them even have the courage or decency to call me back.

2) The Lonely Lady House

I’d prefer to live with people my age. However, housing is extremely hard to find. I respond to an ad to rent a room from a retired faculty member at my school.

Diana is in her mid 70’s. She greets me warmly. She shows me the room for rent on the second floor. The room is clean, quiet, and furnished. We are only a few blocks away from school. If I live here, I won’t have to buy a parking pass. The possibility of saving a few hundred bucks on parking sends a nice warm feeling through my body.

Diana invites me into her kitchen. We sit down at her big wooden table. She brings me a big glass of water. She asks me about my major and my future plans. We speak about my goals as an aspiring lawyer. She tells me about her career in social justice and her tenure in academia. Time passes rapidly. I text my next appointment that I won’t be able to make it. Diana and I speak for over two hours.

I ask her about the rent. She gives me a very reasonable figure. It seems as if we are ready to close the deal.

Diana smiles and tells me “Phil you seem very mature and very interesting. I would really like to rent the room to someone like you.” I smile back, but my stomach drops as she continues. “I have a really nice girl, a Grad Student who looked at the room yesterday. I am in the process of doing a credit check on her. Unless something catastrophic happens I will rent the room to her. But if that doesn’t work out I will definitely give you a call!” Diana says.

Suddenly the full spectrum of the situation dawns on me. Diana already has a tenant lined up. At this point, she just wants a friendly young person to talk with. I have cancelled showings and wasted the better part of a day looking at a place I had no chance of getting.

On my way out, Diana gives me a big grandmotherly hug. “It was so nice to meet you!” she says, “Please keep in touch, give me a call. Let me know whats going on with you.” she orders. I smile and nod compliantly.

3) The Mountain House

“Where the fuck is this place?” I think to myself. The same thought radiates over and over again in my mind as I drive along the windy road deeper and deeper into the woods. My GPS tells me to keep going. Finally, I make a left turn through an open gate. “Any girl I bring back here will immediately leave and probably call the police” I mutter to myself as I drag my Prius up the steep dilapidated driveway. I continue driving until I reach the top of the hill.

Jeremy walks up to my car to greet me. He looks like he’s in his early 50’s, pretty average looking white guy. “You must be Phil,” he says with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. As I get out of my car, I take a long look around the property. The dude hoards scrap metal. The entire front yard is full of it. I point to a mobile home at the far bottom of his property. “Does anyone live in there?” I ask. “Yep, been renting to that guy for years now,” he replies.

The inside of the house resembles the outside. The floor and all the table tops and cabinet tops are piled with junk collected over the past thirty years. “I am around here most of the time,” Jeremy says when we arrive in the kitchen. “I work from home making motivational tapes from my studio right here,” he says pointing to the kitchen table.

He takes me to the room I am looking at renting. It is in total disarray. “Bob is moving out in a few days” Jeremy tells me. I am convinced that Bob is a drifter. There are food wrappers and empty bottles strewn out on the floor. The bedsheets are ripped cleanly off the mattress. I see a pair of worn down size-15 tennis shoes. “Who is this disheveled giant?” I silently wonder.

I quickly rule out living here.

4) The Favela

I meet Austin in the afternoon for a quick tour of his place. He takes me straight to the backyard where a tall white guy stands staring off into this space. “This is Mike” says Austin. Mike pays no attention to us and continues standing silently. We walk back into the house where Austin introduces me to two more middle-aged residents. The living room is curtained off, a couple more people live there. “Bill lives here, my buddy Joe and his son live in this room, there is a girl that lives in that backroom…..” Austin tells me. I stop counting the number of residents at seven. If I’m not mistaken a total of 11 people live in the 3 bedroom house.

Austin leads me into the garage, “these are my sons.” The two boys are playing video games. Both about 19 years old. One of Austin’s sons looks kind of like him, a tall kind of pudgy white kid, the other son is a lanky 6 foot 7 black kid. Both boys look to be about the same age. I don’t even try to figure out the logistics. Pictures of 1980’s Penthouse calendar girls with shoddy old-school silicone implants line the walls.

Without any other good options, I actually consider moving into this favela. Luckily enough, there are always more options on Craigslist.

5) The Serial Killer house

Colton wrote one of the most confusing discombobulated Craigslist ads I have ever seen. I call the number listed on his page. A desperate panicked voice answers the phone. “My roommates bailed on me. They are going to kick me out. I won’t be able to find anywhere else to live. I will have to move back home to Fresno,” Colton says. “Calm down” I tell him, briefly interrupting his slippery slope. “Look I’m interested in renting the room. I have a friend who would be interested in sharing a room with you. Just talk to your landlord,” I say. He tells me to bring a cashier’s check to the room which immediately raises my suspicions.

I call Colton when I get to the building. “Did you bring the check?” he immediately asks. “Of course not I want to see the place first” I reply. This whole situation is super shady and starting to freak me out. My suspicions are raised, I plan to keep a distance from whoever I meet in that house.

Colton answers the door. He is a short chubby Hispanic kid with a very creepy high-pitched voice. The living room is completely empty of all furniture. The walls and carpet are all scratched up. Like somebody left in a hurry. The carpet is a nauseating grey-brown color. The place smells horrible. I don’t have words to adequately describe the putrid odor (decomposing flesh?).

I open the door to the first bedroom. More disgusting carpet and scratches from a hasty escape. I open the door to the second bedroom. I let out an audible gasp and take two steps backward. The odor is stomach churning. Half of the bedroom is completely empty. Colton’s side of the room is decked out in “My Little Pony” memorabilia. The walls, the bed, the dresser, everything in his corner is some blend of pink and purple.

Colton looks at me with a nervous look. “Do you like the place?” he asks in a fidgety voice, “are you ready to go in on the lease?” I start backing away slowly, not fully answering his question. “There are some problems here but i’ll think about it,” I tell him. His body language grows hostile. He crosses his arms and stares down at the floor. He doesn’t even shake my hand on the way out.

Epilogue: I find a nice quiet studio in the woods about 30 minutes away from campus in Ben Lomond. The commute sucks, but I have never been so grateful to find a decent place!