This Couple Is Trying to Find a Home on a Budget That You Could Never Fathom

Welcome back to another edition of The Search. Each week, we feature lovely couples hunting for a home on a budget that blows your fucking mind.

Meet Kal and Tracy. They’ve been married for two years, but live separately. They’re finally ready to find a place together, but they’ve had a tough search the last few months. They’ve got a max of $600 thousand cash for a down payment, so they’re not sure where they’re going to find an affordable one-bedroom apartment.

This is Lily and this is Scout. They want one thing: a dishwasher, and more than one window. They don’t mind if they keep renting, but the highest they can go is a monthly lease that has way too many digits in it. Will they get what they want? Or will they just have to keep opening new high yield savings accounts to max out?

Meet Nikolai and Jannes. They’re ready for a little more space and a backyard. Will they find it with barely two million dollars to spend? You would think, yeah, duh. But the answer is more like, sure, maybe, IDK.

This is Gerald. He’s only got 100 dollars. Sorry, we read that wrong. He’s only got 100,000,000 dollars. Will he be out-bid on this one-room cabin? Vote now!

That’s right, it’s time to vote. As readers of The Search, you get to have a say in the future of our house-hungry featured guests. Vote YES for “Are you fucking serious, these are their budgets and they’re worried?” or vote NO for “What the hell is happening, why is this happening, what even is this column?”

Check back next week for the results!

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Behind the Writing

The NYT runs a column called The Hunt, and it is basically *the above* with only slightly-less-wild budget-to-livability ratios. Here, I’ve (clearly) taken liberties to harp on the fact that only the country’s wealthiest can afford standards of living that should be universal. We are in the midst of a housing crisis in which apartments across the country are left empty or used as Airbnbs, and zoning restrictions prevent new buildings that go up to be great affordable housing (rather, than, say, hotels or office space or new-age gyms). Housing is an essential human right that the US does not acknowledge. We need to get past the underlying belief that there is a certain threshold for “too high” a standard of living for people who don’t make enough money to afford it. Nothing is too good for the working class. Nothing is too good for those on welfare. Nothing is too good for our most vulnerable.

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That’s all for today—thanks, as always, for reading and supporting this newsletter. See you right here next week, or this Sunday if you decide to…