Tales From the Sublet Jungle

ARLINGTON, VA—I hadn’t planned to spend all summer sleeping on the floor of a one-bedroom apartment with a woman whom I barely know.

I was supposed to have a modest-sized room and bed to myself. But for the last nine weeks, I’ve been crammed, along with a friend from high school, on the disturbingly hair-infested carpeted floor of an apartment living room. Almost every night, we get the pleasure of seeing the person from whom we are subletting stumbling through the room late at night to connect her computer to the phone line or to make tea. If it hadn’t been for a generous friend staying in Washington who let me borrow a surplus mattress from the dorm room he’s renting for the summer, I’d be sleeping directly on the floor. This summer’s hardships, however, are just the latest in a series of bad experiences in the jungle of summer sublets.

Sharing a small apartment with a total stranger—especially one who is extremely unfriendly and mostly converses in a language I don’t understand—isn’t much fun. Any thoughts of inviting people over or lounging around the apartment on weekends disappeared when we learned we’d have an unexpected guest. I now try to avoid being in my own “home” as much as possible.

On their face, the series of calamities in the life of the woman I’m subletting from—if they are accurately relayed by her—are almost endearing. First, her plans to study in England for the first half of the summer disintegrated, and she instead had to take summer classes at an area college. This meant she was going to have to spend nine days over a three-week period in June sharing the apartment with us—a fact she relayed to us over a month after we’d agreed to rent the apartment from her. Then, at the end of those nine days when she was to head to New York and spend the rest of the summer with her boyfriend, he dumped her. Without any other place to stay, she informed us that she’d be taking back half of the room for the rest of the summer.

While we are being partially compensated for the changes to our sublet arrangement (our rent has been cut in half—making the cost ridiculously low relative to normal rates in Washington), my roommate and I certainly would have never agreed in advance to this cramped and undesirable living arrangement, no matter the price. My roommate does note, however, that the savings do significantly augment our beer budget.

And while sleeping on the floor will go down as the worst experience during my last three years of renting housing for the summer—it only serves to complete the hat trick of summers that I’ve been bamboozled in seeking to put a roof over my head.

While living in Washington on the campus of American University two summers ago, I got to learn first hand about the killing Washington universities make renting out their dorms to the city’s enormous intern population over the summer. Tiny dorm rooms—shared with one or two others—rent for roughly $200 per week per person. And for those extremely high prices, tenants aren’t granted access to any of the university’s other facilities. Even worse, the District slaps onto these rooms its enormous 14.5 percent hotel tax.

Of course, I can’t blame the universities for making a profit off of college students totally unaffiliated with their school to reduce housing costs to their own students. And certainly I got all I was promised by American that summer. Nonetheless, I came out of the summer feeling that I’d been duped and paid far too much for far too little. I vowed to get a more reasonable deal on housing if I returned to Washington for the summer. That decision has now come back to haunt me.

While staying in Cambridge last summer, my roommate and I had the pleasure of having our deposit turned into an interest-free loan to the person from whom we were subletting, who after ignoring us or claiming the check was “in the mail,” repaid our $400 only six months after we had vacated the apartment.

I know my misfortune in summer housing is not unusual. Several of my friends have had large chunks of their deposits taken from them for losing items that were never present or damaging already-broken items. About the only people who come out unscathed are those who have the luxury of living for the summer with relatives or family friends.

Perhaps Harvard—particularly the Institute of Politics and the Office of Career Services—could do a better job of helping those who head to Washington (or for that matter to New York or stay in Boston) find good sublets. There has been some talk by members of the Harvard Club of Washington of establishing housing for Harvard interns in Washington. Several other universities, including Boston University, already do this.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to be done about the plight of those who sublet for the summer, other than accepting inevitable financial loss at the outset. Given the relatively small sums of money involved and short duration of summer sublets, there’s little threat of any legal consequences to dishonest renters. And given the limited supply and incredible demand for summer intern housing, even in the midst of a recession, it’s certainly a seller’s market.

Daniel P. Mosteller ’03, a Crimson editor, is a history concentrator in Mather House. He is an intern with Sen. John Edwards’ (D-N.C.) Political Action Committee in Washington. This summer, he has been further honing his skills as The Crimson’s fastest phone answerer.