My First Place<\/em>) about people looking for rentals and I always wanted to reach through the screen and shake them. Who cares if the walls are painted an ugly color? It’s not your place! Sure, you may want to live in it for awhile, but why would you want to spend the time and effort making something yours when it’s not even yours?<\/p>\nFor years, we had this tiny loveseat – not even a couch. We didn’t care, because we weren’t willing to buy a couch to suit a rental. After all, what if it didn’t suit our own house? So we kept it and it was really hard to find seating for people if we had anyone over. We finally caved and bought a couch a few months ago, but it’s certainly versatile enough to go into a house we own as well.<\/p>\n
I would never put the effort in to painting a rental, or gardening in a rental or doing anything to somebody else’s property because rentals are just that – rented! All that time spent trying to make somebody else’s house\/apartment\/town home nice is in vain once you move.<\/p>\n
So to us, moving to a rental in a nicer neighborhood would cost more than what we’re paying right now.<\/p>\n
Currently, our rent is $875\/month. \u00a0This doesn’t include parking ($25\/month) or hydro ($25\/month). So all in, we pay about $925\/month on the apartment.<\/p>\n
It is in a convenient location and that price, for an apartment in city we live in is very, very inexpensive.\u00a0<\/strong>When we first moved here, we paid $975\/month utilities not included for an apartment about half the size of what we are in right now, so for double the size (albeit\u00a0a much more questionable neighborhood).<\/p>\nA quick Craigslist search produced not so promising results, with 1 bedroom rentals that allow dogs in the same types of neighborhoods (what I would consider a bad neighborhood) for anywhere from what we’re paying to $1200\/month. Anything in what I might consider a better neighborhood would be over $1200\/month and usually above that. Any more affordable alternatives are government\u00a0subsidized\u00a0and for lower income families, for which we do not qualify.<\/p>\n
So, am I willing to spend $350+\/month more on an apartment that isn’t mine to live in a neighborhood that may be farther away from work, that would be considered a “better” neighborhood? No.<\/p>\n
I feel safe in the area that we currently live in, it’s just noisy and we have a lot of weird neighbours. In the meantime, we’ll save up money to buy our own place (which will be in a nicer neighborhood) while saving on paying another person’s mortgage.<\/p>\n
Have you ever lived in a\u00a0bad neighborhood? Why?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After writing the post last week about living in a bad neighborhood,\u00a0many readers and commenters asked me why we still choose to live here. Why don’t we move to a better neighborhood? I have an odd way of thinking about living quarters. While most people look for rentals that are in a safe, quiet neighborhood …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Why I Live in A Bad Neighborhood<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n