Craigslist is one of those items on the menu of new technology that people have trouble classifying as a good or bad thing. Response to craigslist has been mixed – some people have been burned and others think it’s perfectly useful. This spring, University students and Eugeneans are relying heavily on this free, public Internet forum to find housing for the summer and fall.
Founded in San Francisco in 1995 by Craig Newmark, craigslist now operates in 190 cities across the country and around the world. It is the seventh-most-visited site on the Internet according to a March 2006 Details article that addressed the seedy underbelly of craigslist. It’s much more than just a housing exchange or an eBay to sell all your crap. It’s also a place where millions of Internet lurkers find sex and run scams.
You have to be careful and you have to be selective in your housing search when using craigslist. Being literate in the language used in craigslist postings is helpful. The “casual encounters” section is where a whole lexicon of sex speak, in which craigslisters are fluent, is exchanged. The Details piece calls it craigslist shorthand: “sub/dom, ts/tg (transsexual/transgender), [etc.]” These, of course, don’t appear very often in the apartment rentals section but certain phrases (SWF – single white female) have pushed their way into pop culture.
Many of us have seen the movie by the same name, “Single White Female,” in which one female roommate becomes obsessed with the other and maniacal stalking and murder attempts ensue. Well, because craigslist has essentially stolen all of the ad revenue that newspapers made with short-speak classified ads, users on craigslist are able to practically write novels explaining what they’re looking for.
I recently snagged myself an apartment in Portland for the summer via craigslist and it was pretty painless. I think what worked well was writing or calling about many more listings than just the one or two apartments that I loved. Some users put pictures up, some users are landlords looking to fill up their buildings and others are taking off for the summer and want to find someone to sublet for a few months. This is where it gets tricky for University students.
Lots of places are only looking for year-long or at least six to nine month tenants. It gets tricky when you’re looking for just a few months; the month-to-month rental agreements seem like a myth to me at this point. So a screening process begins. A process in which you, the craigslist house hunter, becomes a contestant in a mysterious process of elimination. Do you have the unassuming and vanilla tendencies that similar residents of the house are looking for in a sublessee? Or, opposite, are you as into death metal and anarchy as they are?
The first location I scouted, a north Portland room in a fairly run-down house and neighborhood was a startlingly cheap $275 a month plus a meager suggested $15 a month for utilities. So I go up to meet the guy I talked to on the phone and, OOPS, he was out, so some other guy showed me around a pretty messy place after I chatted outside with the other contestant. So I made a day out of it by playing some disc golf and didn’t get discouraged.
Attempt #2 has yielded me a beautiful finished basement room in a southeast Portland house that has a tastefully decorated library, living room, dining room and kitchen. I also will not be worrying about my car being broken into quite as much. The trick may have been my visit to the house; I set it up quick. He suggested I start the lease in late March and I thought to myself, “How can I commit now? I don’t even have a job or an internship.” But I was on the top of the list, I was told. And throughout the tour I was told, “This will be your bathroom… and this will be your kitchen space.”
So that was good. And now I have a $380 a month three-month sublease in a much nicer neighborhood.
It’s all about what you’re looking for, of course. If you’re graduating and looking for some permanence, you’re more capable of signing a year-long lease with a quaint little apartment complex by this cute night-life district and that cute shopping district.
Craigslist is good for knowing what you’re getting into. I knew that when I e-mailed the owner of the room I wanted, who was asking for a renter who was progressive, laid-back, animal-friendly and affable, that I was those things. I wouldn’t have expected to be “on the top of the list” if I were allergic to cats and a born again Christian.
I put up an ad on craigslist asking for success and failure stories from people who’ve used craigslist to find housing. Not many responses, but one woman shared a horror story. Apparently, Sandra Mann was told, there are some international craigslist users who are running scams by sending fraudulent money orders, canceling their intent to arrive in Eugene and asking their renters to refund their deposit. Whoops. Maybe you deserve that one if you don’t take the time to make sure your renter or potential roommate isn’t bogus. But it’s a genuine concern: There are valid claims and requests in the housing section, and there are crazies. But through the e-mail, phone call and the meeting process, you should be fine using craigslist to settle into an affordable and functional abode.
Bill Chenevert is a graduate student at the University