What $1K In Rent Gets A Brother And A Sister In D.C. (Spoiler Alert: Unfairness Ahead)

by Chris Samoray

Living in Washington D.C. can kill a bank account fast. Sleeping in a closet in the nation’s capital can zap the soul even quicker.

It was weird enough when my sister and I found out that we’d be moving to the District within a month of each other. Stranger still was that we’d found apartments in the same building.

For the last three years, we lived over 500 miles apart. Now, we were set up as neighbors in Washington only floors away.

One apartment, a top-floor one-bedroom, came fully furnished with a great view. The other, was a studio split into multiple bedrooms loosely separated by flimsy walls and curtains. My sister got the latter. And not one of the bedrooms either. She’s shacked up in a closet, and the only view to speak of is the bathroom a few feet away.

My sister’s place

But the real kicker? We pay about the same amount in rent.

Washington is a mobile city, with interns and professionals coming and going constantly. The flux creates a pulse in the housing sector that keeps prices up. During the summer, interns flood the city, and I hear it’s next to impossible to find affordable, livable housing. Fortunately, I moved to Washington in the fall.

Both my sister and I found apartments using Craigslist. First we had to filter though scams and delete some odd voicemails. One example left for my sister: “Excuse me, miss, you posted that you’re looking for housing. You’re wasting my time if you don’t live here, you better grow up.” But D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood is now home to us both.

Foggy Bottom is just blocks from the White House and the National Mall, where tourists visit museums and flock to see treasures like the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The George Washington University covers much of Foggy Bottom, too. The place is among the most expensive in the city.

I managed to score a great deal on a one-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood. Better yet, I’d be living with my partner, making rent cheaper. Having seen only pictures, though, I was wary I might be getting played. But the landlady seemed honest enough, and the few pictures I saw showed an apartment that was at least livable. Being in the center of everything as a newcomer to the city wouldn’t be bad either.

Compared to my sister, who was getting used to closet life by now, I didn’t know how good I had it.

On move-in day, the landlady, a sweet woman of Hispanic decent, took the elevator with me to the top floor. She opened the door to the apartment that would be my new home. I was greeted by a couch, chairs, stereo, kitchen table, kitchen knives, cups, plates, bed, shelves of books and even a piano hugging the wall. And still the one-bedroom apartment, with a sliver of a view of the Washington Monument, felt spacious.

My bedroom. Not bad, right?

I couldn’t have been more amazed by my stroke of luck. And neither could my sister.

Her apartment down on the fourth floor was cramped quarters. Her life was squeezed into a closet in a studio apartment split into three bedrooms — well, two bedrooms and a closet with only curtains to hide behind for privacy.

My sister’s closet-room

People coming and going through AirBnb, and fiancés staying for days at a time, were just features of daily living.

But what really got her was the monthly rent difference. Only 200 smackeroos — all that cash for a whole lot less. We both pay just over $1,000 for our apartments. The two other tenants living in her apartment pay more. True, they do have actual bedrooms, with walls that don’t reach the ceiling, and curtain doors.

Based on the price the apartment is worth, listed on the building’s website, my sister’s landlady is not only able to fully pay for the studio; she’s probably making a profit near $2,000 every month. And those earnings are just on that apartment. The landlady has at least one other apartment in the city with a similar setup.

My landlady isn’t making as much as she could be by renting to me, and she’s certainly altruistic. (Thank you!) But overpriced and close-quarter living conditions are a reality in many cities, and Washington D.C. seems to be no different. At least, for most of us.

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