If you don't mind living in the world's creepiest crawl space, you could totally afford living in San Francisco. A couple of guys posted a few pictures of their crawl space to Craigslist, asking $500 rent from anyone willing to live in the dirty hole in the wall.
The post has since been taken down, but not before it got a little attention from the San Francisco media. You can also view the post on an Internet archive — it's quite entertaining. It's pretty clear that one of the housemates, who said he's one of two 20-something "start-up guys" living in the house, wrote the post as a mockery of incredibly expensive rent prices in San Francisco.
With rent skyrocketing in San Francisco, desperate times call for desperate measures and we recently came up with the idea to rent our crawl space out to cash strapped young San Franciscans.
We aren't going to sugar coat this, as you can see by the photos, this is a basement crawl space and the ground is un-even. My roommate Neil has agreed to help out and level off the dirt crawl floor and we have some scraps of rug to throw down. There is a decent amount of room for a mattress and night stand and you can keep a dresser in the garage. You will be able to run an extension cord into the crawl space for light and the garage provides decent heat for those chilly SF nights or feel free to bring in a space heater.
Sure, that may seem like a pricey chunk of dirt to sleep on, but it wouldn't be surprising if someone actually considered living there. The median rent in San Francisco was $4,354 as of October, according to Zillow's rent index. Given that reality, a $500-a-month crawl space starts to sound cozy.
You may be able to afford more home in other places across the U.S., as we've been discussing recently in our series of what it really costs to live in some of America's most affordable cities. You can check out our Raleigh, N.C., and Buffalo, N.Y. stories.
Being able to afford the rent on an average $4,300 San Francisco apartment is one thing, but getting approved to be a tenant is another. Your income and credit scores may factor into whether you can get approved. You can check your credit scores for free every month on Credit.com to see where you stand.
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