CmdJournal Is 💩.

So 'CmdJournal' is the official name of the blogging software I'm writing for this site. And, as of now, it's still shit.

There's a bug in the interface code that breaks if a single blog post is too large. I've known about it for a while and was hoping to get it fixed (and add pictures!) as part of my pre-school month of freedom. But, that has not happened. 😐

Well, last night I wrote a crazy-long post, updating the road trip from Saturday through Tuesday. Haha... my sad little software client absolutely shit the bed. I tried to break it into two, and that didn't work. So I went to bed. 🙂

Anyway, I chopped the shit out of the post and ended up publishing one for each day, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday and Saturday. But... I literally just cut them up and posted them. So if they read a little rough, my apologies. We'll get this cleaned up, unless...

Is It A Feature?

Unless you think gigantic posts are a bad thing? Do you think that a single, 4-day post is too much to read? If you have an opinion, poke me. 🙂

Pictures? Ever?

I really, really wanted to have a picture system working long by now. This blog needs it. Again, sorry it's taking me so long to get on it. This last road trip has pictures associated with it, and the posts will read much better with them. So... honestly... when I do finally get a few good picture-widgets up and running, I'm hoping to go back and do some re-writing of the posts to give them a little more life. 🙂

So... if you're super bored, whenever that happens... maybe come back and revisit my road trip. 🙂

Until then though... seriously, I get that text-only posts are a little dry in 2024. Sorry. 🙁 It's coming. 🙂

Day 7 - Tuesday - Let's End This Already

Tuesday morning. Another night at the rest area. 😐

I had a final set of places to check out Tuesday morning, and planned on applying to a place by noon.

I found Plymouth, Michigan, which sits a little further North. The commute would be be 30+ minutes on good days. Plymouth seems trendy (though a bit hipster) and had a very, very cool downtown vibe. I also found a mediocre apartment out there that is affordable and was... umm... it was, OK? Meh? It wasn't great, not by any means... but it wasn't terrible.

But I did like Plymouth enough to add the apartment to my list. But also, while there, the leasing agent was super friendly and talkative, and also just moved to Michigan a year or so ago. By the end of our chat I decided to check out Taylor, MI and Southfield, MI.... both much closer to Deaborn but were supposed to be less sketchy.

By the time I finished looking at the Taylor apartment it was 3 o'clock. I really wanted to get something sorted and applied to today. I still have shit to get done for school, I still have to move, I still have to get a driver's license, register my car, and so on. Life is calling.

So I went over to IKEA, which had become my unofficial office these last few days.

I don't know. I don't have a single great choice.

But, there is one that stood out the most: Fairlane Wood. Of course, it's among the priciest of places I looked at. I'll cover costs a little more in a future post, but when I was originally budgeting this grad school craziness, I used the rental prices I found on apartments.com. I had seen nice one-bedrooms as low as $1,000-$1,200/mth. But that was in neighborhoods I now realize I don't want to be in.

The trust is, every decent apartment I looked at here (and many shitty ones) were pricier than I had planned on. So I was likely going to end up breaking the "budget" either way. Fairlane Wood is like $150/mth more than my 2nd choice. So more, but not astronomical.

The location? Minutes from campus (like Fairlane Meadow) and in a very non-sketchy little bubble (like Fairlane Meadow).

So... OK, let's do it. At 4:30 today, I drove over to Fairlane Wood. Ready to apply.

If You Tighten Your Stomach Muscles, The Punch Hurts Less

I'm at Fairlane Wood. I'm on my laptop inside the leasing office. I fill out the application.

They use a verification service, like the other apartments did. I'll go through it, and I'll fail. We discussed it ahead of time. After I fail the income verification (but pass the credit history and criminal history shit), then the plan is to email Jessica, from the leasing office, my bank statements.

It's all going as plan. I finish up the verification. I pay the non-refundable fee.

"You're going to hate me a little.", I warn Jessica, "I have my cash spread over 6 different bank accounts. So I'll have to send you 3 months of statements from each one."

Jessica's face gets a little more stern, "It all has to be in one account, we can't accept multiple account statements."

What. The. Fuck.

I don't know what to say. I smile. The laptop, held upright in my hand, lowers with the rest of my arm.

What. The. Fuck.

I didn't know what to say, but I guess my face said it all. Because alongside me and Jessica, was Nicole, another leasing agent. "Don't worry", she tells me, "we can get it figured out."

I keep smiling and just turn away, walking back to my backpack. I place the laptop down.

"No really, we can work with the numbers a little. Maybe change the lease length so the total needed is lower."

I still haven't said anything as I turn back to them. I give a little shrug. I looked at Nicole, still though, I wasn't sure what to say. Work with the numbers a little? What does that even mean?

"Do you have one account with most of the money?", Nicole asks.

"I do, but even still that's about half of the total cash across all the accounts."

Nicole and Jessica retreat for a bit. Then come back, and whip out a calculator, and punch some numbers in my face. So here's the skinny: If I look at my single biggest account, based on their minimum requirements... I have enough by like $3,000.

Enough.

So... according to the plan, I should get denied. Then Jessica will take my bank statements to her manager. If all goes well, the manager checks off, and I get a phone call telling me my application has been accepted.

If all does not go well... then the apartment story continues.

That's where we're at. It's Tuesday. It's 8:30 at night. I'm in a coffee shop, typing away. I'm tired. I'm not enjoying this. I'll be sleeping in my car again tonight.

Hopefully this works out. And if so, I've got a place to live... although I'll have to wait another week and a half before I able to move in. So, yeah, that's also ass.

There's more I want to share. More details, more thoughts... but I think most of it will remain lost. Trying to bang out these posts before I forget them, while also kinda miserable, isn't making for the best blogging, I know. Sorry. For now, this is where things are.

I still have a ton of shit to do for school before it gets started... including registering for another class.

I hoped this would've been smoother. It has not been.

Day 6 - Monday - Get Back To It

We're not going to go apartment-by-apartment again. You get it at this point. 🙂

But, Monday's first spot was Pilgrim Village. After I toured the place, we got to talking nuts & bolts. I brought up my non-working situation, and they didn't bat an eye. "We'll just need your last 3 bank statements to show the money has been consistently there."

Whew. After 36 hours, I unclenched my pooper.

I ran into the "must have an active income" problem several more times, but more than not, everyone else was fine with it. And, I eventually realized that all the places that required me to have an active job were all managed by the same company. OK... got it.

Monday was better than Saturday . I found a place that was nice, but a little more than I wanted to spend. Also, their soonest available unit is August 24th... so I'd have another week and half of homelessness. That was Fairlane Wood... and, as you might guess, it does happen to be pretty close to Fairlane Meadow.

I found a few more, but all of these were further out. 20-30 minute commutes.

By the end of Monday, I had a few options. Some were a little too expensive, many had a further commute than I wanted, and all required me compromise more than I had expected to when I was planning shit out in Seattle. No matter how things unfold, I'm realizing that things here are different here and I'm going to have to roll with it.

Day 5 - Sunday - Sit and Stew

So, as I alluded to earlier... as I was going around Saturday, I found that some of the leasing offices were closed on Saturdays. But, crazier still, I found that all of the leasing offices were closed on Sunday. All of them! What the fuck? I'm in Michigan, not Tennessee.... I was not prepared for places closed on Sundays. At all.

Well anyway, I spent Saturday night at another rest area. Again. This too is getting old. However, on Sunday morning, I have nothing to do. I have a list of more apts to check out, so no need to find more. What to do?

It would be a long day. Not just because I had nothing to do or nowhere to go, but because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find any apartment at this point. I never imagined cash in the bank wouldn't be enough. Was I going to face this everywhere I went? How much more sideways is this shit going to go?

I sat at the rest area in a lawn chair and read a book. Two hours later, it's 11 am.

This is going to be a long fucking day.

It was. I went to a coffee shop. I blogged like mad. And then, at 7pm.... mother fucking everything started closing. At seven! Because, it's fucking Sunday? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS PLACE?!?!

--sigh--

OK, so... we covered my first 3 days in Michigan so far. Let's catch you up on days 4-7. Wow, I just realized it's been seven fucking days already. OK, so... onto Saturday...

Day 4 - Saturday - Time To Apartment Up

I had a list of places to look at, and after taking Friday easy, I planned on spending the weekend hitting up a bunch of leasing offices. I was pushing out further than I had previously. In addition to driving around in general, I also made it a point on Friday to hit up some of the towns around Dearborn.

Actually, let's take a second to talk about this. I don't know if "towns" or "cities" or what is the right word, but that's what it is out here... it's a single continues urban area, but it's made up of a bunch of (I think) independent cities. Dearborn, Dearborn-Heights, Livonia, Westland, Taylor, and on and on and on.

So yeah, on Friday I pushed out to Westland and Livonia; towns that are 20-30 minutes west of Dearborn. By the time you get out there, it starts to be a little more upscale, if you will. I used "upscale" in my other post too, and I'm not sure if it's exactly the word I want to use, but I'm not sure what to use instead. Upper middle class? Either way... let's get back to it...

So, Saturday morning after my shower (woo!) and free hotel breakfast (waffles!) I headed out to find home. I started with what felt like the nicest place:

Reserve At Westland (take 1)

I show up, walk into the leasing office. It's empty save one leasing agent. I tell her I'm interested in looking at their 1 bedrooms.

"Do you have an appointment?", she asks.

"Umm... no?", I reply, surprised at the need for an appointment. Moments later I'm heading back to my car. 😐

The Cove At Westland

"Do you have an appointment?"

Fuck. So is this just a fucking thing out here? Is this a Michigan thing, or some weird post-COVID holdover? An appointment? I want to look at a fucking apartment, I'm not asking for dental care.

But guess what? This time around she's cool. I showed up at the same time as another family, who also did not have an appointment. After a checking her calendar, and the slightest of eyerolls, she decides to take as both to go see their model together.

The Cove was #2 on my list.... based purely on driving by and apartments.com... so it's not a strong #2, but initially it was my second choice.

So, when we walked into the model, and it was gross as hell I started to worry. The apartment must be over 100 years old... and you can see about 98 layers of paint on the walls. It was comically bad. But beyond that, things were dirty. Again, this is the model. Then I opened the coat closet... and down the center... ugh... some gross brown drip along the shelving. I just closed the door, and waited for the other family to finish.

The Cove was ass. But... while we were on the walk over, I grabbed my phone, and made an appointment at that first place. 🙂

Reserve At Westland (take 2)

I left the Cove and went back to the Reserve (which is like 200 feet away).

The girl sees me, smiles, then recognized me as the dude who was just there 30 minutes ago and smiles a little more strained. I tell her that this time I do have an appointment, and give a disarmingly charming smile in return.

Anyway... we toured the place, and it was nice. I like it a lot actually. But their next available 1-bedom is late-September/early-October.

"But your website shows you have available units?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry but sometimes the website doesn't get updated right away", she explains.

Fuck me.

Heather Ridge Apartments

Closed on weekends

Hampton Court Westland

Closed on weekends

You know, when you move to a new place you have to be ready for things to be different even without knowing what those things may be. Apartment-hunting in Michigan is quickly turning into one of those things.

I'm not going to list every place that was closed, but there were a few more along the way. Leasing offices closed Sundays. Leasing offices closed the entire weekend. I was not ready for this at all. How do working people find apartments out here? Every place I've ever lived in an apartment, the weekend was the time to look around. Not here...

Fairlane Meadow Apartments and Townhomes

So far The Cove (that gross one) is sincerely the best thing I've seen so far. Fairlane Meadow is the last place to look at on Saturday. I'm not super hopeful at this point.

I get there. It's nice. Really nice. And it's a 2-story apartment (living on bottom, sleeping on top) so it's kind of like a rowhouse... which means no neighbors above or below you.

They have garage spaces (for extra $)... an ammenity I really want which is shockingly hard to find.

The campus is beautiful. The price (with garage) is right on budget.

But wait, there's more! Remember in the other post I mentioned that Dearbon is a bit "rough" and things get nicer and nicer as you go West? Well, I had been looking out in those towns, as I already told you, that pushed me out 20-30 minutes (with no traffic). Fairlane Meadows? Boom, right in fucking Dearborn! I found this tiny pocket of apartments close to the school but kind of secluded in their own little world, and Fairlane Meadow was one of them.

The commute to campus is less than 5 minutes.

It's been a pain in the ass, but who cares. I found a great place and the perfect location, and well in my price range. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Life is good.

I tell Camille, the leasing agent, that I love it, and I'm all in. Let's do it.

As we're talking about lease requirements, she brings up the income requirements. I explain to her that I'm here for grad school, that I'm not working, and that I don't plan to work any time soon. I've done this in the past (several times now) and in all cases I showed my bank statements to verify that I have the funds to pay my way.

"We need a verified income source.", Camille explains.

"What if I have more money in the bank right now than you require me to earn all year?"

"We need a verified income source. The verification company we use doesn't have any other options."

"What if I just pay for the entire year's rent up-front?"

"We can't take a full year's rent. And we would still have to have you verified through the service, which requires an active, recurring income source."

3... 2... 1... explosion in the pit of my stomach.

Are you fucking me? I have more cash in the bank right now than the income they require, and they still won't rent me an apartment. Camille mentions something about "Michigan fair housing" rules. Wait... is this a Michigan thing? Am I going to face this in the entire fucking state?

This shit now... it's fucking hilarious. For the first time in my entire life I'm able to say, "whatever it costs, I can afford it", and they respond with, "I'm sorry but your money is no good here."

It's 5 pm. That's it for Saturday.

Am I legit going to be fucking homeless?

What. The. Fuck. Suddenly, CUNY is looking like the better option by far.