AI Listings Have Made Apartment Hunting Even More Debasing

I started reading Valley of the Dolls for the first time the other night. It opens in 1945, with Anne Wells landing in New York and securing a job as a secretary at Henry Bellamy’s theatrical agency. She’s been tasked with finding an apartment for Henry’s handsome business partner; something on the East Side with a living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen, furnished, for around $150 per month. He tells her not to come back to work until she’s found something. “Henry,” his handsome business partner warns, “We may never see this girl again.” 

That’s as far as I made it before closing the book and bathing my face in the blue light of my laptop, my left eye twitching as I refreshed Craigslist for the hundredth time that day. I, too, have been tasked with finding an apartment in the city—not by my boss but by my current landlord, who, after mismanaging a bed bug scare for the past six months, is raising our rent by nearly $1,000. For the three years I have lived in this building, she has done little more than collect rent and turn a page a day in the picture book about dogs she has displayed in the mail room. 

So. Looking for something in Central Brooklyn with a living room, bath, and kitchen, unfurnished, with fewer than 1,000 open housing code violations. Should an apartment meet these rigorous qualifications, there’s no choice but to move on it immediately. The city’s rental vacancy rate is 1.41 percent. If you don’t drop what you’re doing and beg, you will get left behind. My recent iMessage history looks something like: “Can I apply now? Can I see it RIGHT NOW? Can you draw up a lease? Can I give you everything? Can I give you all that’s in my bank account as a security deposit? Sir? Mr. Agent sir? I am a quiet and respectful tenant who spends most evenings cleaning my floors with a wood-and-bristle scrub while cartoonishly large bubbles float above me to the ceiling Cinderella style!!!!” Concrete jungle where dreams are maaaaaaaade of.