(FREE) Chapter 10: The Sublet Caper

When Nick and I couldn't afford a San Francisco apartment, we went down a weird road of sublets within sublets

Since I’ve gotten quite a few new free subscribers lately, I wanted to say welcome! Normally my only free content is my weekly newsletter of Internet drama, Many Such Takes. However, I wanted to do something special for these new subscribers and provide a standalone chapter from my book, Will There Be Free Food? for free. You can find the other chapters here (Chapter 1 is also free.) Will There Be Free Food? is a series of short true comedic stories about my experience as a young, socially inept woman in the 2010s San Francisco tech scene. While it helps to read all chapters, they don’t really play off each other so hopefully this one will be entertaining for newcomers!

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When I first moved out to San Francisco to be with my long distance boyfriend Nick after college, I planned to get my own place instead of moving in with him right away. This wasn’t because I actually wanted to live alone, but rather because everyone kept telling me it was important to be independent, and I didn’t want to deal with any more unsolicited advice about how moving in with Nick would turn me into some sort of antiquated kept woman. Also, Nick didn’t even have his own place—he was living illegally in a spare bedroom of a unit that was being rented by an alcoholic yoga teacher in his fifties, named Van. Van wasn’t crazy about me living there, especially because the building was owned by a religious landlady who refused to allow any unmarried couples to live there (not sure if that was legal, but it also wasn’t legal for us to be there for other reasons.) Anyway, due to how bad this living arrangement was, I decided to stay there only temporarily, while searching for my own place on Craigslist.

For better or worse, I wasn’t able to find a place to live. My budget was next to nothing--not ideal for San Francisco, where even a studio apartment could be $2K/month (keep in mind that’s a 2011 $2K, God knows what that would be now), and even if I was willing to spend my entire income on rent, nobody responded to my queries to be their roommate (forget living alone–there were no studio apartments I could afford). After several weeks of lying to prospective roommates and telling them I was neat, quiet, and respectful, I lamented that this was nearly impossible and Nick suggested that we just keep living in Van’s place. I call this “the moment he asked me to move in” but Nick asserts that I pouted him into it.

However, we couldn’t stay at Van’s place forever. The three of us were sharing the amount of hot water meant for one person, in an apartment with a barely-functioning heating system, no dishwasher, and of course, the religious landlady who showed up to sniff out any unmarried women staying there.

When we decided to move out of Van’s place, I suggested we search for a cheap one-bedroom or studio apartment where we could sign a lease and stay for a while. Nick, however, was anxious about committing to an apartment (I, of course, read this as him not wanting to commit to me) and insisted we get a short-term sublet. 

To the best of my knowledge, subleasing was “not allowed” in San Francisco the same way marijuana was. It was legal and most people did it, but for many people it was still a no-no because of the terms of their leases. As a result, the search for a sublet was a bit sensitive because you needed to worry about landlord scrutiny in addition to rent costs.

After a while of fruitless searching, Nick and I found our dream sublet on Craigslist: the owner lived in Italy, and her apartment was currently being subleased to some other woman who was about to move out. That meant we wouldn’t have to have a roommate. We could treat this apartment as if it were our own, given that the owner was all the way across the ocean. It was a beautiful but small Victorian apartment in the perfect location, near all our favorite bars and restaurants. I inquired by email and the owner, a graceful businesswoman in her forties, agreed to do a video chat with me.

Before we got to know each other, the owner asked me how old I was. I said I was twenty-one. She said, “This might be a problem because I’m going to need you to pretend to be me.” 

We looked enough alike (and plenty of people thought I was way older than my age, to my chagrin) that this charade might have worked if someone didn’t have a very good idea of what she looked like, and mistook her for any woman with long dark hair. I went with it. 

“Alternatively,” she said, “You could just go around and say you’re my lesbian lover, if anyone asks. Nobody is going to give you crap for that because they’re going to want to be politically correct.” I wanted to ask her if she actually thought lesbians went around calling each other their “lesbian lovers” but figured now wasn’t the best time to argue. I agreed, reluctantly, to pretend to be her same-sex partner. Then I stuck my foot in my mouth by asking, “What’s my boyfriend going to do?”

“If you have a boyfriend that’s a problem,” she said. “People are going to want to know why he’s there, who’s this man?”

“Well, he could be a friend.”

“Sure, but how often would he be there? Every day?”

“He’d be living with me.”

“Oh, absolutely not. I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

I told Nick that it didn’t work out. He asked me why I told her about him. I said I didn’t think it would be a problem when I said it, plus, it would be pretty awkward if I lied about his existence and then she later found out that he had been living there. Although I had presented this as an undesirable situation, Nick saw it almost as a suggestion for an alternative plan. We hatched a plot: apply for the apartment again, but pretend to be a different person with a British accent.

Knowing the owner’s preferences from the beginning, I was able to tailor my personality to fit what I knew she wanted: I was a British woman in my thirties, single and loving it, and almost never left the house or had people over. Hook, line and sinker, she agreed to speak to me. Although she tried to video chat, I told her that my camera was broken and we’d have to chat on the phone, which should have been a red flag for her since it’s the go-to line for every Nigerian love scammer. She fell for the accent. She arranged a tour a few days later where I could meet her current tenant. Showing my face to the current tenant would be fine because she had never seen me before.

I showed up at the apartment, and with an accent befitting the one and only Mary Poppins, exclaimed, “What a smashing apartment! Oh! I’m so daft--been in the States so long I’m speaking like a bloody Yankee. If I were in London right now I’d be calling it a flat!”

This woman probably thought this was extremely weird, but I don’t think she figured out it was a fake accent because that just seemed too absurd of a premise. She walked me around the apartment, I told her I loved it, and she said we’d be in touch.

The owner of the apartment emailed me to tell me she heard great things about me and she’d like to sublease to me, but--what luck--she had the option to attend some event in San Francisco for work, and although she wasn’t planning on going, the chance to meet me had clinched it. She wanted to meet up in person for coffee.

I panicked. I wasn’t sure if she would recognize me from the video chat, but I certainly couldn’t rely on the chance that she wouldn’t. I told Nick I wanted to back out, but he was far too invested in the apartment to care. He suggested that if my identity were to come, I should just vehemently deny being the same person. I told him that at the very least I should wear a blonde wig or something. Nick had concerns about how expensive a wig was going to be, and mentioned that if the owner and the current tenant were to trade notes, they might realize something was fishy when the owner called me a blonde and the tenant called me a brunette.

Nick and I actually had a huge argument about this, but I eventually won when I put my foot down and said that I had legitimate concerns I would be arrested for fraud if she figured out that I catfished her. Once Nick came down from the high of being so excited about the apartment, he acknowledged I had a good point. However, we realized the British accent was a key piece to winning that apartment, and it would be best if I continued to put on a British accent for future apartment tours, from the very beginning.

This worked pretty well when we found our next sublet, where we stayed for about six months while the owner was out of the country. Once the owner returned, we needed to find a new place. We finally signed a real lease for a rent-controlled one bedroom apartment like real grownups, but there was an ominous two-week gap between the start of our lease and the return of our current subletting owner. We realized we would have to, somehow, find a sublet for two weeks.

Luckily, we found out that a couple living in the same building as our current sublease was planning to sublet their apartment, too. We immediately agreed to stay at their apartment right off the bat, considering that we were only going to be there for two weeks. Only one problem: the owners could only sublet for four weeks, not two. This meant we would be paying rent twice for two weeks. While we would be staying in our new apartment with a legitimate lease and paying rent for that, we would still be paying for the last two weeks of the sublet. 

Nick and I hatched another plan: we would stay in this new sublet for the first two weeks, then for the second two weeks, we would sublet our sublease, with the condition that our sublessees left as soon as the two weeks were up and didn’t leave any trace that they had ever been there. We didn’t even bother unpacking our stuff--we slept on a mattress and lived out of our suitcases until it was time to move. Luckily, Nick found two willing sublessees for the second two week period--a pair of lads right out of college. They seemed about ten years younger than we were, but in hindsight they were probably about our age.

As we were settling into our first real grownup apartment, we went to Best Buy to pick up a television. I was so excited to finally be done with the subleases and sneaking around. Finally we could just live somewhere without pretending we weren’t living there. Just as I thought all of this was behind me, I got a phone call from an unidentified number while I was perusing video games at Best Buy.

“Are you currently living at 1502 Broadway?” the person asked. That was the address of the place we were subleasing to the two young men. This was a voice I didn’t recognize, and definitely not the voice of the people who subleased to us in the first place, so I didn’t feel comfortable telling them if we lived there or not. After all, without the context of subleases, an unidentified person calling you to ask where you live would be an immediate hangup and block. So naturally, I hung up and was about to block the number when it immediately called me back.

“ARE YOU CURRENTLY AT 1502 BROADWAY?!” he asked again. I got the sense that he was angry. I also got the sense that the “correct” answer to this question was that we were living there, because that was what we agreed to, but of course, it wouldn’t have been true. I simply responded, “No, I’m at Best Buy.”

“No, I mean where do you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where you live? It’s a simple question. Do you currently live at 1502 Broadway or not?”

“Define ‘currently.’”

“It’s a yes or no question!”

“I’m not really comfortable talking to you. Call my boyfriend.”

Within seconds, Nick was getting calls. He asked me why I didn’t just say yes. I told him I didn’t want to get in trouble, and I also didn’t know what this was all about. I saw Nick pacing through the racks of televisions on the phone, nodding solemnly and nervously rubbing his pointer finger into his opposite palm.

“Well, something happened at the sublet apartment,” Nick said, after hanging up. “Apparently one of the guys we subleased to got locked out of the unit and kicked the door down.”

“Are we in trouble with the owners?”

“Well, we don’t know the owners.”

“What about the couple who subleased to us? They didn’t own the place?”

“No, they were sublessees.”

“So that guy on the phone--he subleased to them?” Nick nodded.

“So he’s the owner of the apartment?”

“No,” Nick said. “Someone subleased to him. He’s afraid that if this gets out to that person, he’s going to get in trouble for subleasing.”

“The guy on the phone is going to get in trouble for subleasing to the couple, you mean?”

“No, the guy who subleased to that guy could get in trouble because when the owner subleased to him he made him promise not to sublease to anyone else.”

“So we’re not on the hook for the door?” I asked, not sure if this situation was shaping out to be much worse or much better than I anticipated. I tried to do the math in my head to figure out how many people would be in trouble for this weird sublease chain before the buck fell to us.

“We’re not in trouble unless they want to admit we were living there,” Nick said. “Which would get them in trouble. So nobody is doing anything.”

“Oh. Okay.” 

Nick put his phone away and held my hand. We looked at the sprawling paths around Best Buy, excited to embark on our new adventure, our new apartment, our big adult lives together.  

While you might think we learned our lesson about involving ourselves in complicated sublets, we didn’t. Shortly after we settled into our new place, we started renting it out as an AirBnB whenever we went on vacation, which spiraled into us renting it out as an AirBnB while we weren’t on vacation and just staying in slightly cheaper hotels around San Francisco to make a small profit. Eventually, one of our guests stole my sunglasses and we stopped doing this. At the very least, this pencil-headed hotel scheme didn’t revolve around a British accent, so I like to think we made progress.

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