Recently, the thing that has taken up most of my time has been housing hunting in Vancouver. Due to my work schedule and the cost of flights, I decided to do all of my house hunting online. It wasn’t until I started the process that I realized the difficulty of looking for a place to live in Vancouver while I was sitting in the GTA. If you have ever tried to look for a place to live with Craigslist as your main resource, you will realize that the world is full of strange people, many of whom have basement suites for rent. So you can experience the joys of house hunting with me, today I’m sharing some of the more remarkable places I came across on Craigslist.
The first remarkable place I came across was an ordinary looking furnished ground floor suite that just happened to back onto a scene out of True Detective. I don’t mean that the house was next door to the home of an emaciated Matthew McConaughey. Instead, the house backed onto what looked like a Louisiana bayou. It may have been my imagination running wild after a True Detective marathon, but I’m quite sure I saw a small dilapidated hunt when I zoomed in on the photo. On the insistence of my mother, I closed up the listing in favour of a place with a setting that was a little more Vancouver and a little less New Orleans.
The second remarkable place I found was a beautiful bedroom in a shared house with big windows, hardwood floors and walls lined with bookshelves. The location was great too. So great, in fact, that I was ready to email the owner immediately. I hesitated a bit when I read the ideal roommate description. The current tenants sought a roommate who was a “fun loving yogi :),” who was also into meditation. Vegetarians were preferable for the close knit house. The kitchen was equipped with a Vitamix, a juicer and a dehydrator, and the house had a yoga studio inside of it. As a vegetarian who practices yoga (however lax about meditation I may be), I was nearly sold. That is, until I saw the request for information about myself and a photo. “What are they trying to do, build a yoga cult?!” I exclaimed to my father, to which he replied, “Well, it would give you a very healthy friend base.” As much as I would like a Vitamix, I decided that it wasn’t worth it if I had to join a cult to use it.
The third place was also remarkable for the tenants more than for the house itself. The listing was posted by a man looking for someone to share the house with he and his five year old son. As I am looking for a new place to live and not for a new family, I put the listing aside and wished all the best for the man and his son.
Then came a slew of properties that looked a lot of more murdery than any place I aspired to live. I found a place where a man was specifically looking for a female to live with and a place where the landlord requested that the tenant never had guests over. I found a remarkable number of places with 420 in the house description. I have nothing against people who like to smoke weed, but if it is as much a part of your house as your couch is — the listing read, “flat screen TV, reclining couch, 420” — then I think this may present a problem when I am seeking a study environment. After I found a place that was literally filled with garbage, I decided to take a break from house hunting for a while. Eventually, I got to a point when I was ready to write a wanted Craigslist ad kindly requesting a roommate who at least spoke English conversationally and wouldn’t leave their dirty dishes lying around. Luckily, I managed to find a place to live that’s close to a beach, a yoga studio and a crazy sushi restaurant. The landlord seems like a nice normal woman who made the move from Toronto to Vancouver twenty-five years ago. After looking at thousands of Craigslist posts, I have finally found a place to live that is neither in the middle of a bayou nor is it a meeting place for a cult of yogis. Only time will tell if I would have been better off moving into the house full of stoners.
Song of the Day: To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra
OR Home for a Rest by Spirit of the West, in case the first song was too dramatic for you
